Who's Watching the Watchmen? I Am, Unfortunately
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
I love Watchmen. I teach a Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels course at the Bethesda Writer’s Center and I constantly use Watchmen as an example of sequential storytelling techniques. How to lead the eye. How to use the symmetry of the page (and the entire book, for issue 5) to create a thematic crescendo that flows through your work. How to pack panels with subtext and back story to create a storytelling experience one can only achieve in comics. The story itself is at times uneven and outdated but it’s not the Big Picture that makes Watchmen so groundbreaking. It’s the attention to detail. It’s treating the comic form like a piece of art that shouldn’t be lumped together with movies, TV, comic strips, and wall hangings. It’s about the small; Watchmen’s plot is just the canvas that Moore and Gibbons paint an intricate masterpiece on.
Having said that, I’m not excited about this movie at all. The first trailer gave me a bit of a geek-on, I’ll admit. The teaser where no-one talked and the visuals coincided with my favorite moments from the book.
And then there was the second trailer.
My first real problem with the second trailer might sound kind of…fan boyish? Rorschach, Nite Owl II, etc – they were never part of a team called The Watchmen. Now that might sound like I’m nitpicking a small point but, the thing is, the fact that the superheroes aren’t called The Watchmen is part of the essence of the book. A major thematic thread in the book is ego and the superhero. Everyone thinking they can solve the world’s problems their own way (or not caring enough to even solve the world’s problems). You read the book expecting the usual superhero conclusion, where the good have to come together to fight evil. Put their differences aside. Form a group – you expect The Watchmen. But you never get it – you get to the end and you realize the superhero can never exist because they can never work together. They’ll end up destroying each other and us, in the process. The Watchmen can never exist.
Who watches the watchmen? No-one does, yet we put our lives and our fate in their hands. That question is the meaning of the title – it’s not because they’re some costumed superhero team. The Minutemen struggled through it. The Minutemen II never got off the ground. The Watchmen can never exist.
It’s not a minor point – it’s the point. And calling the group of heroes The Watchmen kind of leads me to believe that the movie’s just going to be about superheroes going bad – the Big Picture – and will never handle the subtleties and storylines that makes Watchmen great.
Which brings me to the rest of trailer two. And everything that’s been released or said about the movie since.
It looks visually stimulating, sure. And I’m sure it’ll be a good movie in its own right. But everything I’ve seen from it so far has been big, nosy, and ham-fisted. Every critic that hated it (every critic that never read the book) has called it loud and uneven. Every critic that loved it (every critic that read the book) has remarked on how true it was to the visuals and the plot. They talk about the violence and the balls it took to show Dr. Manhattan’s tremendous wang (which, I should point out, was small in the book to highlight his emotional impotence – the most powerful person in the world has a small penis. Skyscrapers, small dicks, etc).
The plot. The canvas. The background noise. That’s what the Watchmen movie looks like so far and thats what every review has pointed to. Comic fans love it because of the background noise and critics don’t get it because of the background noise. And everyone sees it being touted as the GREATEST GRAPHIC NOVEL EVER and fanboys say how true it is to the book and the newbies say, “Well, if that’s true than the book sucks.”
I got free tickets to go see the movie so I’m going to go. Maybe my opinion will change. It’s happened before. Robin’s excited to see it because she knows how much I admire the book. I showed her issue 5 (“Fearful Symmetry”) and explained to her how meticulously Moore and Gibbons broke down the pages and why they did it. I told her they can never reproduce something like that on film and that’s what makes me admire Watchmen so much. She told me that I’ll probably appreciate the movie in a different way…
We’ll see. Either way I'll be sure to post my opinion here.
Having said that, I’m not excited about this movie at all. The first trailer gave me a bit of a geek-on, I’ll admit. The teaser where no-one talked and the visuals coincided with my favorite moments from the book.
And then there was the second trailer.
My first real problem with the second trailer might sound kind of…fan boyish? Rorschach, Nite Owl II, etc – they were never part of a team called The Watchmen. Now that might sound like I’m nitpicking a small point but, the thing is, the fact that the superheroes aren’t called The Watchmen is part of the essence of the book. A major thematic thread in the book is ego and the superhero. Everyone thinking they can solve the world’s problems their own way (or not caring enough to even solve the world’s problems). You read the book expecting the usual superhero conclusion, where the good have to come together to fight evil. Put their differences aside. Form a group – you expect The Watchmen. But you never get it – you get to the end and you realize the superhero can never exist because they can never work together. They’ll end up destroying each other and us, in the process. The Watchmen can never exist.
Who watches the watchmen? No-one does, yet we put our lives and our fate in their hands. That question is the meaning of the title – it’s not because they’re some costumed superhero team. The Minutemen struggled through it. The Minutemen II never got off the ground. The Watchmen can never exist.
It’s not a minor point – it’s the point. And calling the group of heroes The Watchmen kind of leads me to believe that the movie’s just going to be about superheroes going bad – the Big Picture – and will never handle the subtleties and storylines that makes Watchmen great.
Which brings me to the rest of trailer two. And everything that’s been released or said about the movie since.
It looks visually stimulating, sure. And I’m sure it’ll be a good movie in its own right. But everything I’ve seen from it so far has been big, nosy, and ham-fisted. Every critic that hated it (every critic that never read the book) has called it loud and uneven. Every critic that loved it (every critic that read the book) has remarked on how true it was to the visuals and the plot. They talk about the violence and the balls it took to show Dr. Manhattan’s tremendous wang (which, I should point out, was small in the book to highlight his emotional impotence – the most powerful person in the world has a small penis. Skyscrapers, small dicks, etc).
The plot. The canvas. The background noise. That’s what the Watchmen movie looks like so far and thats what every review has pointed to. Comic fans love it because of the background noise and critics don’t get it because of the background noise. And everyone sees it being touted as the GREATEST GRAPHIC NOVEL EVER and fanboys say how true it is to the book and the newbies say, “Well, if that’s true than the book sucks.”
I got free tickets to go see the movie so I’m going to go. Maybe my opinion will change. It’s happened before. Robin’s excited to see it because she knows how much I admire the book. I showed her issue 5 (“Fearful Symmetry”) and explained to her how meticulously Moore and Gibbons broke down the pages and why they did it. I told her they can never reproduce something like that on film and that’s what makes me admire Watchmen so much. She told me that I’ll probably appreciate the movie in a different way…
We’ll see. Either way I'll be sure to post my opinion here.
posted by Jason at
10:35 AM
Diary: Inauguration 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Robin and I were up at 6:30AM and out the door by 7AM. We made our way down to the Rosslyn metro station, carrying a bag that held a blanket, a thermos filled with hot cocoa, snack bars, magazines, books, and our MP3 players. We first attempted to board the B38 but learned that Homeland Security shut the Key Bridge down to all traffic, including buses. We rode the escalator down to the metro station only to find the platform was packed eight-people deep. Three trains came, each one filled with bodies, and none of them accepting any additional passengers. We decided to walk – around three miles in the blistering cold – because it was worth it.
We missed the festivities on election night. We watched the returns with friends and didn’t realize the extent of spontaneous partying that was going on in front of the White House and down on U Street until the next day. I’ve been an Obama supporter since he exploded on the national scene in 2004. Robin’s been a supporter since…well…Hillary dropped out of the race. We were elated when he won and we still regret missing the celebrations on election night; we weren’t going to miss the inauguration.
So we walked. We knew some shortcuts, thankfully. We took the bike path along the Potomac and crossed the Memorial Bridge, entered DC from behind the Lincoln Memorial, and managed to get to the Mall-area bypassing all security checkpoints and bottlenecks. The area wasn’t too packed by the time we got to the Reflecting Pool; most of the people that far west set-up shop on the steps on the Lincoln Monument and everyone else was walking towards the National Mall. Robin and I headed east, looking for a good spot to lay out the blanket and wait for four hours.
We made it all the way down to the Washington Monument. The Mall itself was already packed and not very inviting. The Monument-area was filling in. We figured a jumbotron is a jumbotron and it doesn’t matter where we watch it from as long as there were people around, so we double-backed to the WWII Memorial and picked a nice spot in the grass to sit back and enjoy the concert replay.
By the time the jumbotrons switched to a live feed our area was pretty packed. People were standing shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-back as congressmen and women and dignitaries took their seats on the capitol steps. Everyone cheered for Ted Kennedy and Al Gore and Bill Clinton and all of the other well-recognized liberal politicians. I cheered for Jim Webb because the man tries to sneak guns into the capitol and Roland Burris for providing me with many hours of entertainment over the past several weeks and Mark Warner because he’s a good looking guy. Everyone in my area booed George W. Bush – I abstained and was even a bit peeved at the lack of class in the audience. It’s over – it’s done – let him go home and mull over the complete failure that was the past eight years. Inaugurations, especially this one, are about new beginnings. The booing just seemed to really cheapen a great moment. It made it all seem so petty.
Barack finally comes out and the crowd erupts into cheers. Flags waving, various chants, cameras flashing, and people crying – it was euphoric. Then Rick Warren came out to do his prayer thing and no-one really cheered except for the handful of people who didn’t fully understand why the moment was kind of awkward. Rick Warren delivered an incredibly hypocritical speech that mentioned civil rights and liberties and all men being created equal and I think I finally fell off of that organized religion fence I’ve been sitting on, thereby checking off one of my New Years Resolutions.
Anyway – it was time for Biden to take his veep oath. Everyone cheered and the energy was back and we were all tensing up and getting ready to explode after Obama’s oath and then…we pretended to care about Yo-Yo Ma rocking the cello.
But then! Then Obama came up to take the oath! Well, stumble through the oath thanks mainly to Roberts’, the Chief Justice of the highest court in this mother fucking nation, safeguard of our US Constitution, messing up the oath which, I should remind you, is specified in the US Constitution. Obama paused because, you know, there are already challenges to his citizenship and presidency working their way through the court system all the time, and didn’t want to give the wingnuts anymore “He Ain’t my President “ fuel. Despite the pause Obama STILL fucks up the oath and FreeRepublic.com probably has a digital orgasm on its servers.
While all of that cynicism was going on in my head the crowd was cheering and hopeful and positive. I managed to get my head back into the game, celebrate with them, and enjoy the inaugural address.
I don’t get the media’s assessment of the inaugural address being all doom and gloom. That was just the set-up – the take home was that we’re going to work through it because that’s what America does. I thought it was an inspiring speech. It was about personal responsibility, working for change, constant improvement, and, in turn, making the country better. Critics found it depressing, this whole “taking responsibility for actions and exhibiting self control thing.” Oh, wait – isn’t that SOCIALISM? Oh…not, it’s not.
Anyway, we pretended to listen to the closing poem and cringed a bit when Lowery said something about yellows mellowing and whites being cool for once. Then we headed west, went back over the memorial bridge, took the Arlington Cemetary/110 bike path up to Courthouse, sat down at Four Courts and had some beef and Guinness stew and whisky coffee in an attempt to bring our frozen extremities back to life.
We went back home afterwards to rest our feet after a day of walking and freezing. After an hour or so of convalescing, we headed back to DC.
The metro stations were nowhere near as packed as they were in the morning. There seemed to be an even mix of people who were off to one of the various balls and people who were just out to enjoy the city. It was an interesting mix – for the people in the tuxes this seemed like just another inauguration. They were joking about this-that-and-the-other-thing, taking pictures of each other, and looking like people who were just going out to some routine fancy party. Everyone else was genuinely beaming, however. Smiles ear to ear, reviewing photos, and talking about their inauguration experience. The haves and the have-nots sharing a train, and it was the latter that seemed to truly appreciate this day for what it was. This inauguration goes beyond politics. It goes beyond Bush and it goes beyond civil rights and MLK Jr.’s post-racial America. It’s about hope and optimism. And as stupid as that may sound to some people, hope and optimism is what the have-nots need in order to become haves.
The real problem with the past eight years is that no-one believed in shit. Lame Duck president squanders all of his goodwill following a tragic attack on our financial and military infrastructure by fucking every single thing up that he touched. The government was piling on the debts, the people were losing their jobs, the civil liberties where being threatened, and we were losing American lives in a baseless war while the war we were all fired up to win was being neglected. The problem with the past eight years is that when all’s said and done no-one really cares about anything. It’s all shit, after all, right?
Look, Obama’s not perfect. He’s going to fuck up. But he inspires the people to do more with their lives, to make America great again, and the people will answer in time. His message isn’t Bush’s post-911 message of, “Go buy shit.” His message is to work for the country and the country will work for you in return. Then go buy shit. It’s inspiring. It’s mature. I honestly can’t believe the American people, who’ve grown fat, lazy, and compliant over the past eight years, are buying into it. I guess we’ll see.
Anyway, we ended up at Big Hunt, had some dinner and some beers, but got very tired, very quick. We left at around 9:30 and crashed upon returning home. While at Big Hunt Robin and I talked about the coming Obama presidency. We were both glad we decided to go to the inauguration, saying it’s the kind of story we’ll tell our grandkids one day. By the end of the day we were frozen, tired, and even a bit cranky. But we were hopeful – and that’s something.
We missed the festivities on election night. We watched the returns with friends and didn’t realize the extent of spontaneous partying that was going on in front of the White House and down on U Street until the next day. I’ve been an Obama supporter since he exploded on the national scene in 2004. Robin’s been a supporter since…well…Hillary dropped out of the race. We were elated when he won and we still regret missing the celebrations on election night; we weren’t going to miss the inauguration.
So we walked. We knew some shortcuts, thankfully. We took the bike path along the Potomac and crossed the Memorial Bridge, entered DC from behind the Lincoln Memorial, and managed to get to the Mall-area bypassing all security checkpoints and bottlenecks. The area wasn’t too packed by the time we got to the Reflecting Pool; most of the people that far west set-up shop on the steps on the Lincoln Monument and everyone else was walking towards the National Mall. Robin and I headed east, looking for a good spot to lay out the blanket and wait for four hours.
We made it all the way down to the Washington Monument. The Mall itself was already packed and not very inviting. The Monument-area was filling in. We figured a jumbotron is a jumbotron and it doesn’t matter where we watch it from as long as there were people around, so we double-backed to the WWII Memorial and picked a nice spot in the grass to sit back and enjoy the concert replay.
By the time the jumbotrons switched to a live feed our area was pretty packed. People were standing shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-back as congressmen and women and dignitaries took their seats on the capitol steps. Everyone cheered for Ted Kennedy and Al Gore and Bill Clinton and all of the other well-recognized liberal politicians. I cheered for Jim Webb because the man tries to sneak guns into the capitol and Roland Burris for providing me with many hours of entertainment over the past several weeks and Mark Warner because he’s a good looking guy. Everyone in my area booed George W. Bush – I abstained and was even a bit peeved at the lack of class in the audience. It’s over – it’s done – let him go home and mull over the complete failure that was the past eight years. Inaugurations, especially this one, are about new beginnings. The booing just seemed to really cheapen a great moment. It made it all seem so petty.
Barack finally comes out and the crowd erupts into cheers. Flags waving, various chants, cameras flashing, and people crying – it was euphoric. Then Rick Warren came out to do his prayer thing and no-one really cheered except for the handful of people who didn’t fully understand why the moment was kind of awkward. Rick Warren delivered an incredibly hypocritical speech that mentioned civil rights and liberties and all men being created equal and I think I finally fell off of that organized religion fence I’ve been sitting on, thereby checking off one of my New Years Resolutions.
Anyway – it was time for Biden to take his veep oath. Everyone cheered and the energy was back and we were all tensing up and getting ready to explode after Obama’s oath and then…we pretended to care about Yo-Yo Ma rocking the cello.
But then! Then Obama came up to take the oath! Well, stumble through the oath thanks mainly to Roberts’, the Chief Justice of the highest court in this mother fucking nation, safeguard of our US Constitution, messing up the oath which, I should remind you, is specified in the US Constitution. Obama paused because, you know, there are already challenges to his citizenship and presidency working their way through the court system all the time, and didn’t want to give the wingnuts anymore “He Ain’t my President “ fuel. Despite the pause Obama STILL fucks up the oath and FreeRepublic.com probably has a digital orgasm on its servers.
While all of that cynicism was going on in my head the crowd was cheering and hopeful and positive. I managed to get my head back into the game, celebrate with them, and enjoy the inaugural address.
I don’t get the media’s assessment of the inaugural address being all doom and gloom. That was just the set-up – the take home was that we’re going to work through it because that’s what America does. I thought it was an inspiring speech. It was about personal responsibility, working for change, constant improvement, and, in turn, making the country better. Critics found it depressing, this whole “taking responsibility for actions and exhibiting self control thing.” Oh, wait – isn’t that SOCIALISM? Oh…not, it’s not.
Anyway, we pretended to listen to the closing poem and cringed a bit when Lowery said something about yellows mellowing and whites being cool for once. Then we headed west, went back over the memorial bridge, took the Arlington Cemetary/110 bike path up to Courthouse, sat down at Four Courts and had some beef and Guinness stew and whisky coffee in an attempt to bring our frozen extremities back to life.
We went back home afterwards to rest our feet after a day of walking and freezing. After an hour or so of convalescing, we headed back to DC.
The metro stations were nowhere near as packed as they were in the morning. There seemed to be an even mix of people who were off to one of the various balls and people who were just out to enjoy the city. It was an interesting mix – for the people in the tuxes this seemed like just another inauguration. They were joking about this-that-and-the-other-thing, taking pictures of each other, and looking like people who were just going out to some routine fancy party. Everyone else was genuinely beaming, however. Smiles ear to ear, reviewing photos, and talking about their inauguration experience. The haves and the have-nots sharing a train, and it was the latter that seemed to truly appreciate this day for what it was. This inauguration goes beyond politics. It goes beyond Bush and it goes beyond civil rights and MLK Jr.’s post-racial America. It’s about hope and optimism. And as stupid as that may sound to some people, hope and optimism is what the have-nots need in order to become haves.
The real problem with the past eight years is that no-one believed in shit. Lame Duck president squanders all of his goodwill following a tragic attack on our financial and military infrastructure by fucking every single thing up that he touched. The government was piling on the debts, the people were losing their jobs, the civil liberties where being threatened, and we were losing American lives in a baseless war while the war we were all fired up to win was being neglected. The problem with the past eight years is that when all’s said and done no-one really cares about anything. It’s all shit, after all, right?
Look, Obama’s not perfect. He’s going to fuck up. But he inspires the people to do more with their lives, to make America great again, and the people will answer in time. His message isn’t Bush’s post-911 message of, “Go buy shit.” His message is to work for the country and the country will work for you in return. Then go buy shit. It’s inspiring. It’s mature. I honestly can’t believe the American people, who’ve grown fat, lazy, and compliant over the past eight years, are buying into it. I guess we’ll see.
Anyway, we ended up at Big Hunt, had some dinner and some beers, but got very tired, very quick. We left at around 9:30 and crashed upon returning home. While at Big Hunt Robin and I talked about the coming Obama presidency. We were both glad we decided to go to the inauguration, saying it’s the kind of story we’ll tell our grandkids one day. By the end of the day we were frozen, tired, and even a bit cranky. But we were hopeful – and that’s something.
posted by Jason at
1:44 PM
One Day More
Monday, November 03, 2008
This has been a tiring election season and I can’t wait for tomorrow. Politics are so addictive and I’ve been obsessing over this election the same way fantasy sports nerds obsess over their baseball teams. I’ve been like Hunter S. Thompson with less talent, fewer drugs, but, at the end of the day, the same level of influence he had during the 1972 election: absolutely none.
I do wonder what Hunter S. Thompson would think about this election. Doesn’t Obama’s story seem to parallel McGovern’s? First there was McGovern’s situation – the underdog of the Democratic Party winning out in a hotly contested primary that was finally settled during the Democratic National Convention. McGovern was an unapologetic leftist candidate that was going to bring out the youth and minority vote to topple Nixon. His rhetoric changed after the primaries to become a bit more centrist. Then he picked a VP candidate that might be a bit, you know, insane (except in McGovern’s case Eagleton was, actually, certifiably insane and had the records to prove it). I guess the difference was McGovern’s move towards the center and the Eagleton controversy completely killed his chances of winning the election and, as a result, he suffered one of the worst landslides in presidential history.
Ironically, it’s McCain that went centrist and chose the wrong VP candidate. And, as a result, the polls may not be showing a McGovern-style landslide but it’s certainly looking like Obama could win handedly.
Anyway, tomorrow’s the day. One day more.
I teach class tomorrow evening and I’m going to try my hardest to wrap it up early, although I imagine the students would be resistant. You know, having paid for the class and all. I’m hoping for an early night. Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida are all early closers and once those states are settled we’ll know for sure which way the election will break. If Obama wins half of those states this election is over, folks, and Robin and I are going to go home and make a baby we’ll be so excited. If McCain wins more than half of those it’ll be a long, long night.
Anyway, I thought I’d close out this final election season post with a recap of all the political stuff I posted these past few months. You know, in case you want to relive the awesome.
August 27th, 2008 – Comparing Obama’s pre-presidential experience to our five greatest presidents’.
August 28th, 2008 - I handicapped McCain's VP choice. I called Rob Portman, Sarah Palin wasn't even on my list. Fail!
August 29th, 2008 - A couple hours after Palin was introduced as McCain's VP choice I dropped some initial thoughts on my blog. I hate to pat myself on the back but I called THE FUCK out of where this narrative was going to go.
September 1st, 2009 - More on Palin, where I accused her and McCain of putting "Election First" even before they adopted the slogan "Country First."
September 2nd, 2008 - I looked at the Conservapedia entries for our four Presidential players.
September 2nd, 2008 - I live blogged the RNC.
September 3rd, 2008 - I said McCain's only chance to win this race was to drop Sarah Palin from the ticket before it's too late.
September 3rd, 2008 - More RNC live blogging.
September 4th, 2008 - RNC-approved pick-up lines for the final night.
September 5th, 2008 - A little on the GOP/Evangelical relationship and how it's really kind of a sham.
September 5th, 2008 - I filled out my own Electoral Map and called the election for Obama 324 electoral votes to 214. It is interesting to note that I had Obama winning despite losing Pennsylvania and Ohio. I had him winning Virginia, Indiana, and New Mexico (at least two of those seem to be a lock at this point) but also winning Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri (not as likely). If I called North Carolina and Georgia I'd look like a genius right now. I do still think Obama's going to win Missouri and Louisiana, however, and I think we'll be hearing the term "reverse Bradley effect" in regard to those two states.
September 9th, 2008 - I casted the eventual 2008 Election made-for-TV movie.
September 12th, 2008 - I pitched the 2008 Election comic book.
September 18th, 2008 - LOLections!
September 19th, 2008 - I suggested some new polling questions designed to get at the info the undecided voter really wants.
September 28th, 2008 - I talked about what I'd do for the economy with a $700-billion stimulus.
October 3rd, 2008 - I commented on the VP debate.
October 4th, 2008 - I commented on an idiot that commented on my comments of the VP debate.
October 6th, 2008 - I decided to talk about education reform since neither of the candidates were talking about education reform.
October 6th, 2008 - Commented on the second debate and said some nasty things about undecided voters.
October 14th, 2008 - I said some nasty things about cross-party couples.
October 16th, 2008 - I gave Joe the Plumber some financial advice.
October 17th, 2008 - The five best entries on Conservapedia.
October 20th, 2008 - I helped Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann define what makes someone Pro-American.
October 21st, 2008 - I designed some new signs for McCain's campaign.
October 23rd, 2008 - I talked about some other crazy congressmen that you all should be aware of.
October 24th, 2008 - Christianity and politics.
October 31st, 2008 - I came to the conclusion that the electoral college system is unfair for those that want to be involved in the election process.
And that's that! Go vote tomorrow and I'll see you all on the better side of life.
I do wonder what Hunter S. Thompson would think about this election. Doesn’t Obama’s story seem to parallel McGovern’s? First there was McGovern’s situation – the underdog of the Democratic Party winning out in a hotly contested primary that was finally settled during the Democratic National Convention. McGovern was an unapologetic leftist candidate that was going to bring out the youth and minority vote to topple Nixon. His rhetoric changed after the primaries to become a bit more centrist. Then he picked a VP candidate that might be a bit, you know, insane (except in McGovern’s case Eagleton was, actually, certifiably insane and had the records to prove it). I guess the difference was McGovern’s move towards the center and the Eagleton controversy completely killed his chances of winning the election and, as a result, he suffered one of the worst landslides in presidential history.
Ironically, it’s McCain that went centrist and chose the wrong VP candidate. And, as a result, the polls may not be showing a McGovern-style landslide but it’s certainly looking like Obama could win handedly.
Anyway, tomorrow’s the day. One day more.
I teach class tomorrow evening and I’m going to try my hardest to wrap it up early, although I imagine the students would be resistant. You know, having paid for the class and all. I’m hoping for an early night. Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida are all early closers and once those states are settled we’ll know for sure which way the election will break. If Obama wins half of those states this election is over, folks, and Robin and I are going to go home and make a baby we’ll be so excited. If McCain wins more than half of those it’ll be a long, long night.
Anyway, I thought I’d close out this final election season post with a recap of all the political stuff I posted these past few months. You know, in case you want to relive the awesome.
August 27th, 2008 – Comparing Obama’s pre-presidential experience to our five greatest presidents’.
August 28th, 2008 - I handicapped McCain's VP choice. I called Rob Portman, Sarah Palin wasn't even on my list. Fail!
August 29th, 2008 - A couple hours after Palin was introduced as McCain's VP choice I dropped some initial thoughts on my blog. I hate to pat myself on the back but I called THE FUCK out of where this narrative was going to go.
September 1st, 2009 - More on Palin, where I accused her and McCain of putting "Election First" even before they adopted the slogan "Country First."
September 2nd, 2008 - I looked at the Conservapedia entries for our four Presidential players.
September 2nd, 2008 - I live blogged the RNC.
September 3rd, 2008 - I said McCain's only chance to win this race was to drop Sarah Palin from the ticket before it's too late.
September 3rd, 2008 - More RNC live blogging.
September 4th, 2008 - RNC-approved pick-up lines for the final night.
September 5th, 2008 - A little on the GOP/Evangelical relationship and how it's really kind of a sham.
September 5th, 2008 - I filled out my own Electoral Map and called the election for Obama 324 electoral votes to 214. It is interesting to note that I had Obama winning despite losing Pennsylvania and Ohio. I had him winning Virginia, Indiana, and New Mexico (at least two of those seem to be a lock at this point) but also winning Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri (not as likely). If I called North Carolina and Georgia I'd look like a genius right now. I do still think Obama's going to win Missouri and Louisiana, however, and I think we'll be hearing the term "reverse Bradley effect" in regard to those two states.
September 9th, 2008 - I casted the eventual 2008 Election made-for-TV movie.
September 12th, 2008 - I pitched the 2008 Election comic book.
September 18th, 2008 - LOLections!
September 19th, 2008 - I suggested some new polling questions designed to get at the info the undecided voter really wants.
September 28th, 2008 - I talked about what I'd do for the economy with a $700-billion stimulus.
October 3rd, 2008 - I commented on the VP debate.
October 4th, 2008 - I commented on an idiot that commented on my comments of the VP debate.
October 6th, 2008 - I decided to talk about education reform since neither of the candidates were talking about education reform.
October 6th, 2008 - Commented on the second debate and said some nasty things about undecided voters.
October 14th, 2008 - I said some nasty things about cross-party couples.
October 16th, 2008 - I gave Joe the Plumber some financial advice.
October 17th, 2008 - The five best entries on Conservapedia.
October 20th, 2008 - I helped Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann define what makes someone Pro-American.
October 21st, 2008 - I designed some new signs for McCain's campaign.
October 23rd, 2008 - I talked about some other crazy congressmen that you all should be aware of.
October 24th, 2008 - Christianity and politics.
October 31st, 2008 - I came to the conclusion that the electoral college system is unfair for those that want to be involved in the election process.
And that's that! Go vote tomorrow and I'll see you all on the better side of life.
posted by Jason at
11:22 AM
One Person, Three Votes
Friday, October 31, 2008
Back in 2000 I was one of the people defending the electoral system, stating that we’re a Federal Republic and, unless that changes, an equal portion of power needed to be given to the people in smaller states. But I just sat down with my old friend The Spreadsheet and I think I convinced myself that the electoral system needs to be revisited. I'm just going to talk through it, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...
Since a state’s electoral votes are equal to the number of members the state has in the Senate and the House, and the House congressional districts tend to be drawn by geography and not by population, it seems to me like the weight of a single person’s vote is greatly increased in states where districting is not necessarily indicative of population size.
My first chart (below) looks at the eligible voter population for each state compared to the number of electoral votes for that state.
It looks like the “At Large” states of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana have a lot more weight to their votes than the states with more than 1 Representative. DC also has entirely too much weight but I’ll let that one pass because DC doesn’t have any representation in Congress – they should have SOME sort of national advantage. This doesn’t necessarily help either the Republicans or the Democrats, honestly. The color coding of the table corresponds to the current polling data for each state with red as strong McCain, pink as leaning McCain, dark blue as strong Obama, light blue as leaning Obama, and gray as a toss-up. I do find it interesting that the Big-3 Battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio carry three of the four lowest weights per vote. It takes a little over 3.5 people in Pennsylvania to equal one vote in Wyoming!
One thing I did find is that when you weight the votes by the number of people in each state that actually DID vote in 2004 against the electoral votes the situation is downright depressing:
Look at all of that blue on the bottom. What that basically means is that the states towards the bottom have a lot of individuals that are trying to get involved in the democratic process but their voices are being drowned out by the people who are turning out in smaller numbers. Look at all of those red states that have a disgusting 50-60% voter turnout and, as a result, they’re contributing a larger Presidential vote. And Texas – shame on Texas – with 53.7% turn out and 34 electoral votes. Texas should have electoral votes taken away…and California and New York: you’re not doing much better, either.
I don’t know what the exact point of this exercise is. It’s pretty obvious that the “At Large” states have too many electoral votes even though we’re only talking 3 votes. The obvious way to offset that would be to proportionately scale the other states electoral votes upwards since you really can’t take electoral votes away from the At Large states. But once we start doing that we’re basically a straight-up democracy and not a Federal Republic so we may as well go with the popular vote. The only reason to keep it a Federal Republic would be to offer state officials an opportunity to go against the popular vote but in this day and age that’d be career suicide. Blah, blah, blah…
The other issue here is the fact that the Red Majority we’ve seen over the past 8 years is being pushed by states that really don’t even care enough to vote. That’s a shame. Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, etc are really trying to have their voices heard but their vote doesn’t count as much as Utah, Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, etc. When you take into consideration the fact that almost all of the toss-up and leaning states where Bush states last year, there’s not a lot of Blue up top despite the higher voting rates.
Look, bottom line, if a state supplies fewer voters it actually increases the weighting of the state's electoral-per-voter weighting advantage compared to states that supply more voters. All things being equal, it's only the At Large states that have a severe electoral-per-voter weighting advantage. But all things aren't equal, and the people that are trying to participate in the process are getting the shaft. My conclusion - maybe it's time to go to the popular vote. I'm convinced now.
Since a state’s electoral votes are equal to the number of members the state has in the Senate and the House, and the House congressional districts tend to be drawn by geography and not by population, it seems to me like the weight of a single person’s vote is greatly increased in states where districting is not necessarily indicative of population size.
My first chart (below) looks at the eligible voter population for each state compared to the number of electoral votes for that state.
It looks like the “At Large” states of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana have a lot more weight to their votes than the states with more than 1 Representative. DC also has entirely too much weight but I’ll let that one pass because DC doesn’t have any representation in Congress – they should have SOME sort of national advantage. This doesn’t necessarily help either the Republicans or the Democrats, honestly. The color coding of the table corresponds to the current polling data for each state with red as strong McCain, pink as leaning McCain, dark blue as strong Obama, light blue as leaning Obama, and gray as a toss-up. I do find it interesting that the Big-3 Battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio carry three of the four lowest weights per vote. It takes a little over 3.5 people in Pennsylvania to equal one vote in Wyoming!
One thing I did find is that when you weight the votes by the number of people in each state that actually DID vote in 2004 against the electoral votes the situation is downright depressing:
Look at all of that blue on the bottom. What that basically means is that the states towards the bottom have a lot of individuals that are trying to get involved in the democratic process but their voices are being drowned out by the people who are turning out in smaller numbers. Look at all of those red states that have a disgusting 50-60% voter turnout and, as a result, they’re contributing a larger Presidential vote. And Texas – shame on Texas – with 53.7% turn out and 34 electoral votes. Texas should have electoral votes taken away…and California and New York: you’re not doing much better, either.
I don’t know what the exact point of this exercise is. It’s pretty obvious that the “At Large” states have too many electoral votes even though we’re only talking 3 votes. The obvious way to offset that would be to proportionately scale the other states electoral votes upwards since you really can’t take electoral votes away from the At Large states. But once we start doing that we’re basically a straight-up democracy and not a Federal Republic so we may as well go with the popular vote. The only reason to keep it a Federal Republic would be to offer state officials an opportunity to go against the popular vote but in this day and age that’d be career suicide. Blah, blah, blah…
The other issue here is the fact that the Red Majority we’ve seen over the past 8 years is being pushed by states that really don’t even care enough to vote. That’s a shame. Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, etc are really trying to have their voices heard but their vote doesn’t count as much as Utah, Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, etc. When you take into consideration the fact that almost all of the toss-up and leaning states where Bush states last year, there’s not a lot of Blue up top despite the higher voting rates.
Look, bottom line, if a state supplies fewer voters it actually increases the weighting of the state's electoral-per-voter weighting advantage compared to states that supply more voters. All things being equal, it's only the At Large states that have a severe electoral-per-voter weighting advantage. But all things aren't equal, and the people that are trying to participate in the process are getting the shaft. My conclusion - maybe it's time to go to the popular vote. I'm convinced now.
posted by Jason at
1:11 PM
Bad Christians
Friday, October 24, 2008
I consider myself to be a Christian, I don't feel the need to hide that. I'm probably not as active as I should be and I don't go to church every Sunday but I appreciate the good causes that certain aspects of the community are involved with and I also believe having faith in something is important for me. Maybe it's my science background - the more things are described in elegant equations and theories makes me further appreciate the thought that there's something bigger behind it all. Sometimes the world just seems too perfect to happen solely by chance and the idea of a catalycst behind it all is comforting. I can also see it coming from personal experiences. As a young adult there was a lot of hardship in my life. Three family members dying of AIDS-related complications (including a young cousin that received a bad blood transfussion), an uncle that died unexpectadly over the Christmas season, and other family members that passed away too young from unfortunate circumstances. It's comforting, to me, to think there's something out there for these people. It helps me move on.
Having said that, I'm the last person to impose any sort of belief on anybody, mainly because I'm a realist (I realize that might seem contradictory). I don't believe in a literal interpretation of the bible at all. I'm fully aware of the inaccuracies and the impossibilities of a lot of the text. I believe it's audacious to look at this universe, look at our insignificant roll in how it all works, and believe that there's a force out there that meddles in our day-to-day lives and looks out for us simply because we believe that it exists. I believe more in karmic rewards, that good people are good people no matter what they believe in. I believe that this reality is here for us to appreciate and learn about - that God is a builder and he wants to show off what he's built. He wants us to understand it and learn from it. But he doesn't get involved - and why should he? It's like us getting involved in the lives of ants and asking them to worship us.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of Christians out there who believe in the exact opposite. And that brings me to this video:
The smugness of the woman in that video disgusts me. The judgemental, holier-than-thou attitude is as un-Christian as you can get. The eye-rolls, the hatred, and the superiority complex that she carries is the reason why a large portion of our population is so fucked-up right now.
Here's the thing. This woman is evil. There's really no other way to put it. Look at her - from this short clip we can tell that she's guilty of four of the seven deadly sins. You can tell she's gluttonous and slothful just by looking at her. You can tell she's wrathful and full of pride just by the way she carries herself. And yet, for some reason, despite the fact that she is a sinner by the definition of the church she attends, she has the audacity to believe that God's going to look out for her.
Assuming I'm wrong. Assuming God does get involved in our day-to-day lives provided that we strictly follow the rules set-forth in some ancient text. How on Earth can this lazy, hateful woman believe that God's going to look out for her? What is this Christianity that she knows?
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I think Religulous kicked the whole thing off. Robin and I walked out of the theater and I said, "Kind of makes you feel like an asshole, doesn't it?" I've loosed up a bit since then, since my own faith is a very personal thing and not something I use as proof of knowledge or superiority. Hell, my faith is what I use to keep humble and remind myself that we'll never know all the answers. So I don't think I'm destructive because of my beliefs, but the movie certainly opened my eyes a lot more to the people who are destructive in the name of their faith.
And, of course, like all things I can't help but tie it to politics. The evangelicals and southern baptists and Pentecostals and other denominations that tend to make up the religious base of the Republican Party are the first people to decry liberalism on moral grounds, usually pointing to abortion and gay marriage as the main reason why liberalism is evil. Abortion - ok, I can get that moral dilemma. It's not an easy thing to resolve if you're a person of faith. I believe in a woman's right to choose, myself, but I kind of see a cut-off (extreme circumstances aside) when it gets to the point that the baby can survive without the mother which, as of writing this, is around 22-weeks. Which is really what we have in place right now, anyway. The gay marriage issue, however - I firmly believe that being against gay marriage is un-Christian. It's not like churches are going to be forced to marry homosexuals so, you know, why the hate?
Those two things aside - the rest of liberalism is Jesus' teaching, practically verbatim. The same "moral majority" that decries liberalism would also use the GOP sound bites like "socialism" and "state-sponsored welfare." Isn't the main goal of Christianity to take care of those less fortunate than you? Would't things like lower taxes for the poor, higher taxes for the rich, universal health care, welfare, unemployment, higher minimum wages, peaceful resolutions, the belief in rehabilitation, etc be in-line with Jesus' teachings? Wouldn't tax breaks for the rich, wars, the death penalty, and the abolition of social programs be more in line with the people Jesus was rallying against?
How can a true Christian believe that the GOP's the right call? I can see someone of faith not standing strongly behind either party, or going solely for centrists, but the Republicans? Really?
In my mind I keep coming back to one term: Bad Christians. There are way too many of them in this world. They look at the bible and think it's written permission to do whatever they want and say whatever they want as long as they believe that Jesus died for their sins. One of these Bad Christians would read this and probably classify me as a sinner simply because I don't subscribe to their particular version of Christianity. Despite the fact that I do more good in this world than they will ever do, despite the fact that there are the same fundamental beliefs unifying us to an extent, despite the fact that I'm actually reaching back to the bible to justify my own political leanings, I'd be a sinner.
It's a shame. A community as large as the Christians could do so much good for the world. And they do, don't get me wrong. But it seems like there are the fringe members that do nothing but good, the fringe members that do nothing but evil, and the one's in between that do jack-shit and assume the Lord's looking out for them. The latter two types of Christians are the bad ones, and they're unfortunately the ones that are growing in number.
Having said that, I'm the last person to impose any sort of belief on anybody, mainly because I'm a realist (I realize that might seem contradictory). I don't believe in a literal interpretation of the bible at all. I'm fully aware of the inaccuracies and the impossibilities of a lot of the text. I believe it's audacious to look at this universe, look at our insignificant roll in how it all works, and believe that there's a force out there that meddles in our day-to-day lives and looks out for us simply because we believe that it exists. I believe more in karmic rewards, that good people are good people no matter what they believe in. I believe that this reality is here for us to appreciate and learn about - that God is a builder and he wants to show off what he's built. He wants us to understand it and learn from it. But he doesn't get involved - and why should he? It's like us getting involved in the lives of ants and asking them to worship us.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of Christians out there who believe in the exact opposite. And that brings me to this video:
The smugness of the woman in that video disgusts me. The judgemental, holier-than-thou attitude is as un-Christian as you can get. The eye-rolls, the hatred, and the superiority complex that she carries is the reason why a large portion of our population is so fucked-up right now.
Here's the thing. This woman is evil. There's really no other way to put it. Look at her - from this short clip we can tell that she's guilty of four of the seven deadly sins. You can tell she's gluttonous and slothful just by looking at her. You can tell she's wrathful and full of pride just by the way she carries herself. And yet, for some reason, despite the fact that she is a sinner by the definition of the church she attends, she has the audacity to believe that God's going to look out for her.
Assuming I'm wrong. Assuming God does get involved in our day-to-day lives provided that we strictly follow the rules set-forth in some ancient text. How on Earth can this lazy, hateful woman believe that God's going to look out for her? What is this Christianity that she knows?
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I think Religulous kicked the whole thing off. Robin and I walked out of the theater and I said, "Kind of makes you feel like an asshole, doesn't it?" I've loosed up a bit since then, since my own faith is a very personal thing and not something I use as proof of knowledge or superiority. Hell, my faith is what I use to keep humble and remind myself that we'll never know all the answers. So I don't think I'm destructive because of my beliefs, but the movie certainly opened my eyes a lot more to the people who are destructive in the name of their faith.
And, of course, like all things I can't help but tie it to politics. The evangelicals and southern baptists and Pentecostals and other denominations that tend to make up the religious base of the Republican Party are the first people to decry liberalism on moral grounds, usually pointing to abortion and gay marriage as the main reason why liberalism is evil. Abortion - ok, I can get that moral dilemma. It's not an easy thing to resolve if you're a person of faith. I believe in a woman's right to choose, myself, but I kind of see a cut-off (extreme circumstances aside) when it gets to the point that the baby can survive without the mother which, as of writing this, is around 22-weeks. Which is really what we have in place right now, anyway. The gay marriage issue, however - I firmly believe that being against gay marriage is un-Christian. It's not like churches are going to be forced to marry homosexuals so, you know, why the hate?
Those two things aside - the rest of liberalism is Jesus' teaching, practically verbatim. The same "moral majority" that decries liberalism would also use the GOP sound bites like "socialism" and "state-sponsored welfare." Isn't the main goal of Christianity to take care of those less fortunate than you? Would't things like lower taxes for the poor, higher taxes for the rich, universal health care, welfare, unemployment, higher minimum wages, peaceful resolutions, the belief in rehabilitation, etc be in-line with Jesus' teachings? Wouldn't tax breaks for the rich, wars, the death penalty, and the abolition of social programs be more in line with the people Jesus was rallying against?
How can a true Christian believe that the GOP's the right call? I can see someone of faith not standing strongly behind either party, or going solely for centrists, but the Republicans? Really?
In my mind I keep coming back to one term: Bad Christians. There are way too many of them in this world. They look at the bible and think it's written permission to do whatever they want and say whatever they want as long as they believe that Jesus died for their sins. One of these Bad Christians would read this and probably classify me as a sinner simply because I don't subscribe to their particular version of Christianity. Despite the fact that I do more good in this world than they will ever do, despite the fact that there are the same fundamental beliefs unifying us to an extent, despite the fact that I'm actually reaching back to the bible to justify my own political leanings, I'd be a sinner.
It's a shame. A community as large as the Christians could do so much good for the world. And they do, don't get me wrong. But it seems like there are the fringe members that do nothing but good, the fringe members that do nothing but evil, and the one's in between that do jack-shit and assume the Lord's looking out for them. The latter two types of Christians are the bad ones, and they're unfortunately the ones that are growing in number.
posted by Jason at
10:47 AM
Get to Know Your Crazy Congress
Thursday, October 23, 2008
I love the fact that the whole world now realizes how crazy Michelle Bachmann is. Since being elected to the House in 2006 her divisive rhetoric has been a favorite topic of mine – the national media finally called her on it. I now want to call some attention to some other congressmen and women who should also be on your radar. Keep in mind I'm not talking corruption, here - just good 'ole fashioned crazy.
Marilyn Musgrave (R – Colorado) – Most reps probably wish the gays would simply go away but Musgrave takes it to a whole new level. She doesn’t “think there’s anything more important out there than the marriage issue.” Terrorism, the economy, the war – whatever, gay marriage is THE most important issue facing this country today. But what do you expect from a woman who wanted to name 2007 the “National Year of the Bible?”
Lynn Woolsey (D - California) - This champion of woman's rights wrote a letter to the sentencing judge in a rape case, pleading for leniency for the rapist because he's the son of a staffer. She later realized she probably lost some votes with that one and apologized to the victim. The woman publicly rejected the apology.
David Dreier (R – California) - David Dreier hates the gays. He supported the Defense of Marriage Act, voted against gay adoptions, and voted against inclusion of homosexuals as a protected class in hate crime and employment discrimination legislation. Oh, and he's probably gay.
Tom Tancredo (R - Colorado) - Believes that if Islamic terrorists were to use a nuke in a major US city our response should be to bomb Mecca.
Darrell Issa (R - California) - Thought that the whole 9/11 thing was more of a state issue and didn't see why the federal government should be throwing "buckets of cash" at New York.
Virgil Goode (R - Virginia) - Promised his constituents that, unlike terrorist Keith Ellison, he'll be sworn in on the good 'ole US Bible and if people adopt his immigration plan he guarantees there will be no more Muslims in Congress. Keith Ellison is an American citizen, by the way.
John Murtha (D - Pennsylvania) - Lovingly called his constituents racist, then apologized and said he meant to call them rednecks. All in an election year.
John A. Sullivan (R - Oklahoma) - Arrested for assault and battery 1982, trespassing and loitering in 1983, public intoxication and disturbing the peace in 1985, and failing to pay a speeding ticket in 1992. Elected to the House in 2002.
Sue Myrick - (R - North Carolina) - Called the Islamic Society of North America a group of radical jihadists.
John Thune (R - South Dakota) - Keep your eye on this guy because he could very well be the 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee. And why not? He's young, good-looking, a Creationist, and believed the Iraq war was a good call because it'll allow Christian missionaries to operate freely in the area.
Bill Sali (R - Idaho) - Doesn't believe that Muslim congressmen or Hindu prayers are what the founding fathers had in mind when they set up this great Christian Nation. I guess that makes sense, if you forget the fact that freedom of religion and a separation of church and state are two of the main things the founding fathers had on their mind when they set up this great Cristian Nation.
I could just keep going. Maybe I'll do a follow-up one day.
Marilyn Musgrave (R – Colorado) – Most reps probably wish the gays would simply go away but Musgrave takes it to a whole new level. She doesn’t “think there’s anything more important out there than the marriage issue.” Terrorism, the economy, the war – whatever, gay marriage is THE most important issue facing this country today. But what do you expect from a woman who wanted to name 2007 the “National Year of the Bible?”
Lynn Woolsey (D - California) - This champion of woman's rights wrote a letter to the sentencing judge in a rape case, pleading for leniency for the rapist because he's the son of a staffer. She later realized she probably lost some votes with that one and apologized to the victim. The woman publicly rejected the apology.
David Dreier (R – California) - David Dreier hates the gays. He supported the Defense of Marriage Act, voted against gay adoptions, and voted against inclusion of homosexuals as a protected class in hate crime and employment discrimination legislation. Oh, and he's probably gay.
Tom Tancredo (R - Colorado) - Believes that if Islamic terrorists were to use a nuke in a major US city our response should be to bomb Mecca.
Darrell Issa (R - California) - Thought that the whole 9/11 thing was more of a state issue and didn't see why the federal government should be throwing "buckets of cash" at New York.
Virgil Goode (R - Virginia) - Promised his constituents that, unlike terrorist Keith Ellison, he'll be sworn in on the good 'ole US Bible and if people adopt his immigration plan he guarantees there will be no more Muslims in Congress. Keith Ellison is an American citizen, by the way.
John Murtha (D - Pennsylvania) - Lovingly called his constituents racist, then apologized and said he meant to call them rednecks. All in an election year.
John A. Sullivan (R - Oklahoma) - Arrested for assault and battery 1982, trespassing and loitering in 1983, public intoxication and disturbing the peace in 1985, and failing to pay a speeding ticket in 1992. Elected to the House in 2002.
Sue Myrick - (R - North Carolina) - Called the Islamic Society of North America a group of radical jihadists.
John Thune (R - South Dakota) - Keep your eye on this guy because he could very well be the 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee. And why not? He's young, good-looking, a Creationist, and believed the Iraq war was a good call because it'll allow Christian missionaries to operate freely in the area.
Bill Sali (R - Idaho) - Doesn't believe that Muslim congressmen or Hindu prayers are what the founding fathers had in mind when they set up this great Christian Nation. I guess that makes sense, if you forget the fact that freedom of religion and a separation of church and state are two of the main things the founding fathers had on their mind when they set up this great Cristian Nation.
I could just keep going. Maybe I'll do a follow-up one day.
posted by Jason at
9:00 AM
Anti-American Metrics
Monday, October 20, 2008
In the event you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the latest gem from Sarah Palin:
Michele Bachmann, further solidifying her role as the craziest fucking person on the planet, followed-up Palin’s comments by going on Hardball and calling for a full congressional inquiry aimed at finding members of Congress that hold “anti-American” views. So it’s kind of like McCarthyism, except run by a woman that hordes foster children as a primary source of income.
Anyway, if this is going to be the new GOP narrative I figured I’d use numbers (the GOP’s worst enemy!) to figure out who these “pro-Americans” are.
Jobs seem to be pretty American. Americans work, socialist moochers take the hard-working people’s money to abort babies and buy drugs. So I guess we can say unemployment rates should be an anti-American metric. And who has the five highest unemployment rates in the country (not counting territories)? Why that’d be Mississippi, Alaska, Michigan, South Carolina, and Kentucky – four red states and one blue state.
And who’s taking on the largest per capita tax-burden to pay for these lazy commies? Hawaii, Wyoming, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Delaware. Four blue states and one red state.
Well, maybe it’s not the economy that defines the anti-American areas, maybe the metric is more social. The sanctity of marriage seems to be a talking point for the GOP and the GOP seem to know who’s anti-American and who isn’t. So what states have the highest divorce rate? Nevada, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming, and Idaho. Five red states. Surely that’s a mistake! What about the states with the next highest divorce rates? West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi. Four red states and one mostly red state. The lowest divorce rate, by the way? District of Columbia – the bluest “state” in the union. Gay-loving Massachusetts has the third-lowest divorce rate.
Ok, so the anti-American distinction is not economic and it’s not based on family values. Military? Who’s paying for the Iraq War? Surely those are the pro-American states. Oh, the top five contributors to the Iraqi War budget are California, New York, Texas, Illinois and Florida, three solid blues, one mostly red, and one solid red. Well, maybe the blue states pay with money and the red states pay with their lives. So, what state has the highest per capita Iraqi casualties? Granola-munching Vermont. Delaware is also in the top-5 and then, admittedly, it does turn a bit red. But certainly not definitive proof of pro-Americanism.
Maybe it’s per capita Starbucks? Top five is DC, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon. Hell, even per capita Starbucks, the true bastion of liberalism, has two reds in the top five. What could be the metric the GOP uses?
I’ll tell you one thing, it certainly isn’t 9/11 casualties. It was primarily anti-Americans that died in that one. The pro-Americans just like to use it as an excuse to label us anti-Americans traitors.
I'm out of ideas. Is there any metric that the red states DOMINATE that could be used as the anti-American metric? Of course there is: toothlessness. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana...hell, you don't get a blue state until you get to Maine at #17 (and even us liberals are afraid of people from Maine).
So there you go, if you have no teeth you're pro-American. I’m fucking done with this campaign.
“We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”
Michele Bachmann, further solidifying her role as the craziest fucking person on the planet, followed-up Palin’s comments by going on Hardball and calling for a full congressional inquiry aimed at finding members of Congress that hold “anti-American” views. So it’s kind of like McCarthyism, except run by a woman that hordes foster children as a primary source of income.
Anyway, if this is going to be the new GOP narrative I figured I’d use numbers (the GOP’s worst enemy!) to figure out who these “pro-Americans” are.
Jobs seem to be pretty American. Americans work, socialist moochers take the hard-working people’s money to abort babies and buy drugs. So I guess we can say unemployment rates should be an anti-American metric. And who has the five highest unemployment rates in the country (not counting territories)? Why that’d be Mississippi, Alaska, Michigan, South Carolina, and Kentucky – four red states and one blue state.
And who’s taking on the largest per capita tax-burden to pay for these lazy commies? Hawaii, Wyoming, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Delaware. Four blue states and one red state.
Well, maybe it’s not the economy that defines the anti-American areas, maybe the metric is more social. The sanctity of marriage seems to be a talking point for the GOP and the GOP seem to know who’s anti-American and who isn’t. So what states have the highest divorce rate? Nevada, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming, and Idaho. Five red states. Surely that’s a mistake! What about the states with the next highest divorce rates? West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi. Four red states and one mostly red state. The lowest divorce rate, by the way? District of Columbia – the bluest “state” in the union. Gay-loving Massachusetts has the third-lowest divorce rate.
Ok, so the anti-American distinction is not economic and it’s not based on family values. Military? Who’s paying for the Iraq War? Surely those are the pro-American states. Oh, the top five contributors to the Iraqi War budget are California, New York, Texas, Illinois and Florida, three solid blues, one mostly red, and one solid red. Well, maybe the blue states pay with money and the red states pay with their lives. So, what state has the highest per capita Iraqi casualties? Granola-munching Vermont. Delaware is also in the top-5 and then, admittedly, it does turn a bit red. But certainly not definitive proof of pro-Americanism.
Maybe it’s per capita Starbucks? Top five is DC, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon. Hell, even per capita Starbucks, the true bastion of liberalism, has two reds in the top five. What could be the metric the GOP uses?
I’ll tell you one thing, it certainly isn’t 9/11 casualties. It was primarily anti-Americans that died in that one. The pro-Americans just like to use it as an excuse to label us anti-Americans traitors.
I'm out of ideas. Is there any metric that the red states DOMINATE that could be used as the anti-American metric? Of course there is: toothlessness. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana...hell, you don't get a blue state until you get to Maine at #17 (and even us liberals are afraid of people from Maine).
So there you go, if you have no teeth you're pro-American. I’m fucking done with this campaign.
posted by Jason at
1:13 PM
Joe the Plumber Got Money, and He Knows It. He Takes It Out His Pocket And Shows It.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
I wished they would have framed every discussion from last night’s debate around Joe the Plumber. It would have been fantastic.
“Joe the Plumber’s wife should be encouraged to accept a culture of life and keep her next baby.”
“I’m sure Joe the Plumber would greatly appreciate the school voucher program if he lived in Washington DC.”
“I don’t see Joe the Plumber hanging around with domestic terrorists – what does that say about Senator Obama?”
Sadly, all Joe the Plumber talk was confined to the economy and health care. I want to give some advice to Joe the Plumber, by the way. You can set up your new plumbing business as an LLC and pay yourself a salary of $249,999.99 and you’ll get a tax cut (provided you don’t have an additional source of income). Problem solved – now you’re getting some of that wealth Obama’s “spreading around.”
By the way, I really don’t get trickle-down economics, at all. I wish someone would explain it to me. I understand the basic idea is that if the rich get richer they buy more things and the process of buying more things injects more money into the economy and the process of injecting more money into the economy creates more jobs. More jobs means more people making money and more people making money leads to more people spending money and more people spending money leads to the rich getting richer. The cycle continues. That’s it, right?
Here’s what I don’t get – if you have 100 people and 5 of them have disposable income those 5 people would buy a new iPhone. Essentially, Apple misses out on the sale of 95 iPhones. If you have 100 people and a tax-cut for 95 of them frees up some disposable income all 100 people would buy a new iPhone because the other five people will still have a large amount of disposable income. Now we have 100 people buying iPhones and that money goes up the chain to the 5 people with the mass amount of disposable income and they get richer. In either scenario, the rich get richer. In the latter scenario, everyone gets an iPhone, as well. Without the tax cut, the only way Apple will sell 100 iPhones is if the 5 people with disposable income each buy 20 iPhones. Well, that’s not entirely true…the other way it could happen is if the 95 people without disposable income buy their iPhones on credit but that would just lead to some sort of “credit crisis.” What are the odds of that?
Whatever, maybe I’m ignorant. Back to the debate…I think McCain managed to firm-up the voters that were leaning in his direction. He showed some backbone and threw some red meat out there for attention-seeking “undecideds” to finally admit they’re going to vote for McCain. Certainly not enough to win, and I have to imagine Obama’s unshakeable posture and strong proposals resonated with the rest of the country. Obama’s looking more-and-more presidential every day. I honestly can’t imagine how Obama would lose at this point, provided people actually show up to the polls on Election Day. So, you know, go vote.
And if you get a chance, go to a club with Joe the Plumber. You'd be rolling VIP and he'd make it rain; throwing his money this-a-way and that-a-way. You'd get all the hoes.
“Joe the Plumber’s wife should be encouraged to accept a culture of life and keep her next baby.”
“I’m sure Joe the Plumber would greatly appreciate the school voucher program if he lived in Washington DC.”
“I don’t see Joe the Plumber hanging around with domestic terrorists – what does that say about Senator Obama?”
Sadly, all Joe the Plumber talk was confined to the economy and health care. I want to give some advice to Joe the Plumber, by the way. You can set up your new plumbing business as an LLC and pay yourself a salary of $249,999.99 and you’ll get a tax cut (provided you don’t have an additional source of income). Problem solved – now you’re getting some of that wealth Obama’s “spreading around.”
By the way, I really don’t get trickle-down economics, at all. I wish someone would explain it to me. I understand the basic idea is that if the rich get richer they buy more things and the process of buying more things injects more money into the economy and the process of injecting more money into the economy creates more jobs. More jobs means more people making money and more people making money leads to more people spending money and more people spending money leads to the rich getting richer. The cycle continues. That’s it, right?
Here’s what I don’t get – if you have 100 people and 5 of them have disposable income those 5 people would buy a new iPhone. Essentially, Apple misses out on the sale of 95 iPhones. If you have 100 people and a tax-cut for 95 of them frees up some disposable income all 100 people would buy a new iPhone because the other five people will still have a large amount of disposable income. Now we have 100 people buying iPhones and that money goes up the chain to the 5 people with the mass amount of disposable income and they get richer. In either scenario, the rich get richer. In the latter scenario, everyone gets an iPhone, as well. Without the tax cut, the only way Apple will sell 100 iPhones is if the 5 people with disposable income each buy 20 iPhones. Well, that’s not entirely true…the other way it could happen is if the 95 people without disposable income buy their iPhones on credit but that would just lead to some sort of “credit crisis.” What are the odds of that?
Whatever, maybe I’m ignorant. Back to the debate…I think McCain managed to firm-up the voters that were leaning in his direction. He showed some backbone and threw some red meat out there for attention-seeking “undecideds” to finally admit they’re going to vote for McCain. Certainly not enough to win, and I have to imagine Obama’s unshakeable posture and strong proposals resonated with the rest of the country. Obama’s looking more-and-more presidential every day. I honestly can’t imagine how Obama would lose at this point, provided people actually show up to the polls on Election Day. So, you know, go vote.
And if you get a chance, go to a club with Joe the Plumber. You'd be rolling VIP and he'd make it rain; throwing his money this-a-way and that-a-way. You'd get all the hoes.
posted by Jason at
11:45 AM
Cross-Party Couples
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
I was reading this article on MSNBC about cross-party relationships. The link on the main page actually said, “He’s a Democrat, She’s a Republican…And They’re Married!” Way to go, MSNBC. Anyway, the idea behind this article was something I thought about doing several months ago but, after some initial research and interviews, I came to the conclusion that cross-party couples tend to be composed of two people who know absolutely nothing about politics or exactly where their party stands on most issues. They spew off talking points without really knowing what they mean and pretend it is “cute” that they have these fundamental differences in philosophy that tear entire cultures apart yet somehow makes them stronger. After reading the MSNBC article it seems that the author might have discovered the same thing but pushed ahead anyway; either for the paycheck or because he, himself, knows nothing about politics. Being that the author’s regular column is called “Sexploration” I’m going to go with the latter.
I could never date a Republican. A fiscal conservative, social liberal type of Republican – maybe. But a full-blown republican that walks the party-line 99% of the time? Someone who talks about marriage being between “one man and one woman,” brings up William Ayers as a reason not to vote for Obama, and thinks Sarah Palin is a wonderful candidate – I have a hard enough time accepting the fact that those people EXIST but actually dating them? I’d have to be out of my goddamn mind. And I’d hope a Republican woman would think the same way about me.
And, yeah, I’m sure the people in that article would say something cheesy like, “love is more powerful than politics.” Yeah, sure. Here’s the thing – there are A LOT of women (and men) out there. A woman’s wise momma once told her there’re short ones, tall ones, fine ones, and kind ones. If I start dating a woman that has a completely different value-set than me it would either be because I’m desperate or because I really want to have sex with her. If it’s the former, I guess I could see myself marrying her in the future and regretting it for the rest of my life. If it's the latter, anyone who goes on another date in that situation really needs to learn how to walk out the next morning without leaving a note.
But I guess that’s what happens when you, you know, believe in something. The couples in that MSNBC articles…Jonathon Doyle brings up Sarah Palin’s winking and his wife, Amy, counters with, “I like her!” That’s the pinnacle of political discourse, right there. I can’t believe you guys have made it so far. If I were doing this story here’s what I’d ask, “Jonathon, if your wife was raped in Wasilla, Alaska she’d have to pay for her own rape kit. Also, if she got pregnant as a result and Sarah Palin had her say she’d be forced to have the baby. Discuss.”
Maybe I’m over-analyzing this. Maybe I’m not giving love enough credit. After all, I wouldn’t date a Yankees-fan, an astrologer, or someone who dresses in a tiger suit and goes to a convention looking to yiff, either. Now, whereas I think that’s because underlying differences force me to view those people as fundamentally wrong and, let’s face it, ignoramuses, maybe the truth is I just don’t understand the power of love. Maybe there is such a thing as a soul-mate, and once those people meet they should get together despite their crippling differences. It’s like Romeo & Juliet, except in this version the loving couple spend their evenings eating pizza and watching The Office.
Maybe.
Or maybe he reads the MSNBC headlines and she reads the Fox News headlines and they pick candidates based solely on physical appearance and whether they’d like to have a beer with the person. Judging by the MSNBC article, I know which way I’m leaning. They should have titled the piece, “He’s a Democrat, She’s a Republican…And They Don’t Know What That Means!”
I could never date a Republican. A fiscal conservative, social liberal type of Republican – maybe. But a full-blown republican that walks the party-line 99% of the time? Someone who talks about marriage being between “one man and one woman,” brings up William Ayers as a reason not to vote for Obama, and thinks Sarah Palin is a wonderful candidate – I have a hard enough time accepting the fact that those people EXIST but actually dating them? I’d have to be out of my goddamn mind. And I’d hope a Republican woman would think the same way about me.
And, yeah, I’m sure the people in that article would say something cheesy like, “love is more powerful than politics.” Yeah, sure. Here’s the thing – there are A LOT of women (and men) out there. A woman’s wise momma once told her there’re short ones, tall ones, fine ones, and kind ones. If I start dating a woman that has a completely different value-set than me it would either be because I’m desperate or because I really want to have sex with her. If it’s the former, I guess I could see myself marrying her in the future and regretting it for the rest of my life. If it's the latter, anyone who goes on another date in that situation really needs to learn how to walk out the next morning without leaving a note.
But I guess that’s what happens when you, you know, believe in something. The couples in that MSNBC articles…Jonathon Doyle brings up Sarah Palin’s winking and his wife, Amy, counters with, “I like her!” That’s the pinnacle of political discourse, right there. I can’t believe you guys have made it so far. If I were doing this story here’s what I’d ask, “Jonathon, if your wife was raped in Wasilla, Alaska she’d have to pay for her own rape kit. Also, if she got pregnant as a result and Sarah Palin had her say she’d be forced to have the baby. Discuss.”
Maybe I’m over-analyzing this. Maybe I’m not giving love enough credit. After all, I wouldn’t date a Yankees-fan, an astrologer, or someone who dresses in a tiger suit and goes to a convention looking to yiff, either. Now, whereas I think that’s because underlying differences force me to view those people as fundamentally wrong and, let’s face it, ignoramuses, maybe the truth is I just don’t understand the power of love. Maybe there is such a thing as a soul-mate, and once those people meet they should get together despite their crippling differences. It’s like Romeo & Juliet, except in this version the loving couple spend their evenings eating pizza and watching The Office.
Maybe.
Or maybe he reads the MSNBC headlines and she reads the Fox News headlines and they pick candidates based solely on physical appearance and whether they’d like to have a beer with the person. Judging by the MSNBC article, I know which way I’m leaning. They should have titled the piece, “He’s a Democrat, She’s a Republican…And They Don’t Know What That Means!”
posted by Jason at
7:30 AM
President That One
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Is it even worth talking about last night's debate?
Obama clearly won. Obama looked like the President last night, McCain looked like a guy that lost his keys. A confused old man, stuttering, stammering, and rambling, getting uncomfortably close to the audience members, and having his own talking points and catch phrases turned against him. As usual the pundits are playing the line that pushes undecided voters to stay undecided by saying, "Hey, in case you couldn't follow along, no-one really won," because undecided voters generate better news stories.
I'm not going to lie to you, if you paid a modicum of attention over the past month you shouldn't be undecided. If you're undecided, you're an idiot. And I'm not using "idiot" in the playful sense, I'm going dictionary.
idiot (n.) - an utterly foolish or senseless person.
Seriously, the only way you could be undecided right now is if you're the type of person who ignores all of the news and chooses a President based on assumptions you have on the candidate, personal appearance, or what your friends think. There is absolutely no similarities between these two candidates and there is absolutely no reason why you can't look at their beliefs and programs and say, "This one." I can't even comprehend how someone who is truly undecided can function day-to-day. Do they stand in front of their closet for an hour, trying to decide what to wear? Do they spend an hour at a restaurant staring at a menu only to ask the waiter to "bring whatever's good?" Does foreplay consist of flipping a coin to see if it's going to be missionary or doggie? How do you do it - how do you get through life completely unable to make a decision on little things when you can't even pick a candidate considering that the choices are worlds apart? I don't get it.
I also believe that people who choose McCain at this point are either functionally retarded, stubborn-as-all-hell, or, let's face it, racist. Let me make sure I'm absolutely clear here - I'm not saying if you vote for McCain you're some closet racist. You know if you're racist. I am saying that if you vote for McCain and you're not racist, you're either functionally retarded or stubborn-as-all-hell. And you can still vocally support McCain in order to save face in front of your friends or coworkers or whatever but if you go into that polling booth and press the button for McCain, congratulations! You're functionally retarded! Or stubborn-as-all-hell. Or racist. Either way you're a moron.
Obama clearly won. Obama looked like the President last night, McCain looked like a guy that lost his keys. A confused old man, stuttering, stammering, and rambling, getting uncomfortably close to the audience members, and having his own talking points and catch phrases turned against him. As usual the pundits are playing the line that pushes undecided voters to stay undecided by saying, "Hey, in case you couldn't follow along, no-one really won," because undecided voters generate better news stories.
I'm not going to lie to you, if you paid a modicum of attention over the past month you shouldn't be undecided. If you're undecided, you're an idiot. And I'm not using "idiot" in the playful sense, I'm going dictionary.
idiot (n.) - an utterly foolish or senseless person.
Seriously, the only way you could be undecided right now is if you're the type of person who ignores all of the news and chooses a President based on assumptions you have on the candidate, personal appearance, or what your friends think. There is absolutely no similarities between these two candidates and there is absolutely no reason why you can't look at their beliefs and programs and say, "This one." I can't even comprehend how someone who is truly undecided can function day-to-day. Do they stand in front of their closet for an hour, trying to decide what to wear? Do they spend an hour at a restaurant staring at a menu only to ask the waiter to "bring whatever's good?" Does foreplay consist of flipping a coin to see if it's going to be missionary or doggie? How do you do it - how do you get through life completely unable to make a decision on little things when you can't even pick a candidate considering that the choices are worlds apart? I don't get it.
I also believe that people who choose McCain at this point are either functionally retarded, stubborn-as-all-hell, or, let's face it, racist. Let me make sure I'm absolutely clear here - I'm not saying if you vote for McCain you're some closet racist. You know if you're racist. I am saying that if you vote for McCain and you're not racist, you're either functionally retarded or stubborn-as-all-hell. And you can still vocally support McCain in order to save face in front of your friends or coworkers or whatever but if you go into that polling booth and press the button for McCain, congratulations! You're functionally retarded! Or stubborn-as-all-hell. Or racist. Either way you're a moron.
Even if you hate liberalism, even if you don't like the idea of a progressive government or, you know, helping people, an intelligent person has to, at some point, understand Obama is what this country needs right now. The conservatives successfully Starved the Beast, just like Reagan and Bush Sr. did in the 80s and 90s, and Obama won't be able to enact half of his liberal programs. His sole job would be to fix the budget, just like Clinton did in 1992-2000. McCain's sole job would be to continue to live by the GOP play book and starve the beast some more. The beast is famished, on its last legs, and can't survive through another 4-years of increased deficit. Fiscal conservatives with an ounce of sense should probably step back and start planning for 2016. By then we should be back in the black and you all can go fuck it all again.
This election really should be a landslide. I guess we'll see on November 4th. Just remember, Obama may seem to have it in the bag but only if you actually go out and vote for him. Don't get lazy in the end because "the polls are packed and he's gonna win anyway."
posted by Jason at
8:08 AM
Reforming Education
Monday, October 06, 2008
Last week I proposed some economic programs that could be taken up by the new administration come January. Some of those proposals were geared towards education (the revised student loan program for people in technical majors, for instance) primarily because I believe that an educated populace is key to a strong economy. And, right now, we really don’t have an educated populace.
I’m not going to repeat the figures you’ve all heard before about America’s educational standings compared to the rest of the world. They’re not good and we know it. Instead, I want to start with a personal anecdote. Three years ago I was at an infectious diseases technical conference. The first speaker was well-known in the field and he gave a talk on the future of infectious diseases research. He presented us with a real problem – the current crop of students coming through our educational system is not prepared to keep the research going. According to the presenter, students are too lazy, they’re not learning the proper fundamentals in high school and undergrad, and they all have their eyes on big-money jobs without doing the time. His proposal: find ways to bring more foreigners to American institutions.
This goes beyond outsourcing, in my opinion. What we’re talking about here is sponsoring foreign students so that they can continue on the research that keeps infectious pandemics from wiping out entire populations and hoping that some of these students decide to stay here. This is conceding technical and educational dominance to the rest of the world and I’ve heard that very proposal several times since. This is a problem, and it needs to be fixed.
Where do the roots of the problem lie? Some folks say it’s from the growing insistence that education is a dirty word. That it’s better to be a Joe Six-Pack than someone with a college degree and a career. Whereas I think that could be part of the problem, I don’t think it’s the main issue. Some folks say the problem stems from primary and secondary school programs like No Child Left Behind, which could take needed resources from some schools and force states to lower their educational standards. Again, whereas I agree that NCLB is a problem, it’s not THE problem, and it certainly doesn’t explain the folks in their late-teens and low-20s that just aren’t cutting it.
Here’s another anecdote. In elementary school I was in a program from 4-6th grade called G&T – it stood for “Gifted & Talented.” This was a public school program where certain students were selected to take advanced English, social studies, math, and science courses. The rest of the students’ schedules were filled with what were essentially electives. There were language options, music options (orchestra, marching band, or opera/music appreciation), art options – it was a program designed to fit the needs of the students who were above the baseline. A lot of the students in that program went on to top universities and started successful careers in many different industries.
Several years later the program was canceled. It wasn’t for lack of funding or results – it was because enough people complained that a program called “Gifted & Talented” implied that the children who weren’t in it were neither gifted nor talented. Now, I agree to an extent, maybe the naming convention was a bit crass (and, as I’ll point out later, the program probably a bit too broad in its execution). But the program wasn’t renamed, it was canceled, because it was decided that all elementary school students deserved the same level of education.
And that, in my opinion, is the problem with our education system. It’s this American Dream thing, the same driving force behind the housing crisis. This belief that just because we’re all born equal, we stay equal. That everyone should have a house and every child should receive every benefit of the education system.
That belief is bullshit.
Now, I’m not saying that the public education system shouldn’t extend every possible opportunity to every possible student. But it should remain an opportunity. If a child doesn’t meet the requirements to take advantage of that opportunity he or she shouldn’t be allowed to take it. Hell, if a child doesn’t WANT to take advantage of a particular opportunity he or she shouldn’t have to take it. I have friends that are high school teachers, some of them teach AP classes, and I hear plenty of stories of parents that are forcing their kids into these AP programs. These kids are failing the class and slowing the other students down. They can’t be taken out of the class; all the teacher can do is recommend that the class may not be a good idea for the child. And, more often than not, the parent ignores the advice.
I believe that ingenuity comes from the people with real-world experiences. From the kids that weren’t afforded all of the luxuries of a financially stable home and private school. From the kids who had to take the little they had and turn it into a lot. But when these kids enter the public education system and are given the same level of education as the kids who don’t have the drive to turn their situation around or don’t have the same interests as them, they will never be equipped with the tools required to make a difference in this world.
And I still haven’t touched on the driving force behind THIS problem: colleges.
There’s a college for everyone these days, with the promise of a “better life” after completing four-years of undergrad that comes along with it. Colleges are big businesses now, and they lower their acceptance standards, lower their grading standards, and introduce programs for low-performers that completely devalue the degree and once again force the students that would normally excel to be slowed down by the students that are trying to keep up.
It’s time for a comic book analogy. Back in the 1990s there was a collectors’ market that sprung out of one basic idea: “Hey, 40 years ago Amazing Fantasy #15 sold for 15-cents. Now it’s worth $50,000. We should invest in comic books!” Everyone starting buying up first appearances, first issues, and gimmick covers thinking they’d get a 100,000% return on their investment 40 years later. The comic market fed this ideology by churning out new “hot books” every week, inflating the print run, and making a ton of money in the process. After several years of this, people started realizing that the reason why Amazing Fantasy #15 was worth so much wasn’t just because it was the first appearance of a timeless character but also because there weren’t many copies on the market. All of a sudden, owning one of the millions of copies of X-Force #1 didn’t seem like a good investment, and those comics were no longer worth the paper they were printed on.
Well, guess what? Being one of the millions of people in American with a four-year degree in English doesn’t necessarily make you a better candidate for a job. But colleges don’t measure their success on what happens to their alumni after they leave the school. They measure success on how many students are enrolled and getting good GPAs. And, as a result, your degree in this global economy is being devalued.
So there’s a college out there that will accept you, it’s the American Dream to send your child to college, and parents want their kids to take advantage of every opportunity public schools have in order to prepare their kids for college. It’s a noble cause, I’m sure, but it only hurts the system.
Look…the world needs secretaries. It needs mechanics. It needs retailers and customer service representatives. The world needs people to fill a lot of jobs that don’t require a college education. Maybe these jobs require an associates’ degree or a certificate or trade school or a rigorous training program but not a four-year degree that doesn’t offer you any leverage in the career path you’ll find yourself in.
There’s nothing wrong with not going to college. Many members of my family did perfectly well for themselves by simply working hard. By making a choice and sticking to it and seeing it through to the end.
This might seem counter intuitive to my initial point, that America needs a more educated populace. But a more educated populace doesn’t necessarily mean more people with college degrees. It means people who are GOOD at what they do and they’re happy with their career path. You know, I can probably do math better than 99% of all mechanics in America but all mechanics in America can diagnose and fix a car’s problems better than I can. So with that said, who’s smarter? We’re both experts in our field, so the question is kind of pointless.
I guess my point is that education reform needs to start by addressing the fact that not everyone needs to be educated the same exact way. Some kids could pick up on science and math at an early age and run with it. Some kids could lean more towards the liberal arts. Some kids may simply love cars and want to work on them for the rest of their lives. And most kids will have absolutely no idea what they want to do until they graduate high school and start working – they can then decide to continue taking classes after they have a focus.
There’s a way to educate and prepare all of these individuals starting in elementary school. If I had to propose a program, I’d say we scrap No Child Left Behind and put an unprecedented LACK of structure and requirements on public schools. Adopt a college system where there are basic requirements a person has to fulfill but then they can focus their learning in one direction or another. There are advanced math classes for the kid that likes math and those classes can replace some history or English classes down the line. What about classes in 4-6th grade that teaches the basics of mechanical systems? What about physics or electronics? Nurture their skills and interests at a young age instead of forcing them to learn things they have no interest in, will never use again, and will never truly grasp.
In doing that we lessen the need for colleges. We’re not just overwhelming kids with information on all available subjects so that they need college in order to figure out what they want to do. We’re letting them know, from the start, they can be anything they want to be instead of telling them they can be what they want to be while forcing them to take geometry or calculus or biology or world history.
In our expanding, complicated world making sure all children master reading, writing, and arithmetic may not be the way to go anymore. A publication education system that’s designed to produce well-rounded students in order to prepare them for college may not be the way to go anymore. We need to accept the fact that some kids are going to be rocket scientists, some kids are going to write up their technical papers, and some kids are going to file those papers. And they shouldn’t have the same education for the first 18+ years of their lives.
We need to prepare kids to have a positive impact in our economy, not to be statistics and dollars in our universities.
I’m not going to repeat the figures you’ve all heard before about America’s educational standings compared to the rest of the world. They’re not good and we know it. Instead, I want to start with a personal anecdote. Three years ago I was at an infectious diseases technical conference. The first speaker was well-known in the field and he gave a talk on the future of infectious diseases research. He presented us with a real problem – the current crop of students coming through our educational system is not prepared to keep the research going. According to the presenter, students are too lazy, they’re not learning the proper fundamentals in high school and undergrad, and they all have their eyes on big-money jobs without doing the time. His proposal: find ways to bring more foreigners to American institutions.
This goes beyond outsourcing, in my opinion. What we’re talking about here is sponsoring foreign students so that they can continue on the research that keeps infectious pandemics from wiping out entire populations and hoping that some of these students decide to stay here. This is conceding technical and educational dominance to the rest of the world and I’ve heard that very proposal several times since. This is a problem, and it needs to be fixed.
Where do the roots of the problem lie? Some folks say it’s from the growing insistence that education is a dirty word. That it’s better to be a Joe Six-Pack than someone with a college degree and a career. Whereas I think that could be part of the problem, I don’t think it’s the main issue. Some folks say the problem stems from primary and secondary school programs like No Child Left Behind, which could take needed resources from some schools and force states to lower their educational standards. Again, whereas I agree that NCLB is a problem, it’s not THE problem, and it certainly doesn’t explain the folks in their late-teens and low-20s that just aren’t cutting it.
Here’s another anecdote. In elementary school I was in a program from 4-6th grade called G&T – it stood for “Gifted & Talented.” This was a public school program where certain students were selected to take advanced English, social studies, math, and science courses. The rest of the students’ schedules were filled with what were essentially electives. There were language options, music options (orchestra, marching band, or opera/music appreciation), art options – it was a program designed to fit the needs of the students who were above the baseline. A lot of the students in that program went on to top universities and started successful careers in many different industries.
Several years later the program was canceled. It wasn’t for lack of funding or results – it was because enough people complained that a program called “Gifted & Talented” implied that the children who weren’t in it were neither gifted nor talented. Now, I agree to an extent, maybe the naming convention was a bit crass (and, as I’ll point out later, the program probably a bit too broad in its execution). But the program wasn’t renamed, it was canceled, because it was decided that all elementary school students deserved the same level of education.
And that, in my opinion, is the problem with our education system. It’s this American Dream thing, the same driving force behind the housing crisis. This belief that just because we’re all born equal, we stay equal. That everyone should have a house and every child should receive every benefit of the education system.
That belief is bullshit.
Now, I’m not saying that the public education system shouldn’t extend every possible opportunity to every possible student. But it should remain an opportunity. If a child doesn’t meet the requirements to take advantage of that opportunity he or she shouldn’t be allowed to take it. Hell, if a child doesn’t WANT to take advantage of a particular opportunity he or she shouldn’t have to take it. I have friends that are high school teachers, some of them teach AP classes, and I hear plenty of stories of parents that are forcing their kids into these AP programs. These kids are failing the class and slowing the other students down. They can’t be taken out of the class; all the teacher can do is recommend that the class may not be a good idea for the child. And, more often than not, the parent ignores the advice.
I believe that ingenuity comes from the people with real-world experiences. From the kids that weren’t afforded all of the luxuries of a financially stable home and private school. From the kids who had to take the little they had and turn it into a lot. But when these kids enter the public education system and are given the same level of education as the kids who don’t have the drive to turn their situation around or don’t have the same interests as them, they will never be equipped with the tools required to make a difference in this world.
And I still haven’t touched on the driving force behind THIS problem: colleges.
There’s a college for everyone these days, with the promise of a “better life” after completing four-years of undergrad that comes along with it. Colleges are big businesses now, and they lower their acceptance standards, lower their grading standards, and introduce programs for low-performers that completely devalue the degree and once again force the students that would normally excel to be slowed down by the students that are trying to keep up.
It’s time for a comic book analogy. Back in the 1990s there was a collectors’ market that sprung out of one basic idea: “Hey, 40 years ago Amazing Fantasy #15 sold for 15-cents. Now it’s worth $50,000. We should invest in comic books!” Everyone starting buying up first appearances, first issues, and gimmick covers thinking they’d get a 100,000% return on their investment 40 years later. The comic market fed this ideology by churning out new “hot books” every week, inflating the print run, and making a ton of money in the process. After several years of this, people started realizing that the reason why Amazing Fantasy #15 was worth so much wasn’t just because it was the first appearance of a timeless character but also because there weren’t many copies on the market. All of a sudden, owning one of the millions of copies of X-Force #1 didn’t seem like a good investment, and those comics were no longer worth the paper they were printed on.
Well, guess what? Being one of the millions of people in American with a four-year degree in English doesn’t necessarily make you a better candidate for a job. But colleges don’t measure their success on what happens to their alumni after they leave the school. They measure success on how many students are enrolled and getting good GPAs. And, as a result, your degree in this global economy is being devalued.
So there’s a college out there that will accept you, it’s the American Dream to send your child to college, and parents want their kids to take advantage of every opportunity public schools have in order to prepare their kids for college. It’s a noble cause, I’m sure, but it only hurts the system.
Look…the world needs secretaries. It needs mechanics. It needs retailers and customer service representatives. The world needs people to fill a lot of jobs that don’t require a college education. Maybe these jobs require an associates’ degree or a certificate or trade school or a rigorous training program but not a four-year degree that doesn’t offer you any leverage in the career path you’ll find yourself in.
There’s nothing wrong with not going to college. Many members of my family did perfectly well for themselves by simply working hard. By making a choice and sticking to it and seeing it through to the end.
This might seem counter intuitive to my initial point, that America needs a more educated populace. But a more educated populace doesn’t necessarily mean more people with college degrees. It means people who are GOOD at what they do and they’re happy with their career path. You know, I can probably do math better than 99% of all mechanics in America but all mechanics in America can diagnose and fix a car’s problems better than I can. So with that said, who’s smarter? We’re both experts in our field, so the question is kind of pointless.
I guess my point is that education reform needs to start by addressing the fact that not everyone needs to be educated the same exact way. Some kids could pick up on science and math at an early age and run with it. Some kids could lean more towards the liberal arts. Some kids may simply love cars and want to work on them for the rest of their lives. And most kids will have absolutely no idea what they want to do until they graduate high school and start working – they can then decide to continue taking classes after they have a focus.
There’s a way to educate and prepare all of these individuals starting in elementary school. If I had to propose a program, I’d say we scrap No Child Left Behind and put an unprecedented LACK of structure and requirements on public schools. Adopt a college system where there are basic requirements a person has to fulfill but then they can focus their learning in one direction or another. There are advanced math classes for the kid that likes math and those classes can replace some history or English classes down the line. What about classes in 4-6th grade that teaches the basics of mechanical systems? What about physics or electronics? Nurture their skills and interests at a young age instead of forcing them to learn things they have no interest in, will never use again, and will never truly grasp.
In doing that we lessen the need for colleges. We’re not just overwhelming kids with information on all available subjects so that they need college in order to figure out what they want to do. We’re letting them know, from the start, they can be anything they want to be instead of telling them they can be what they want to be while forcing them to take geometry or calculus or biology or world history.
In our expanding, complicated world making sure all children master reading, writing, and arithmetic may not be the way to go anymore. A publication education system that’s designed to produce well-rounded students in order to prepare them for college may not be the way to go anymore. We need to accept the fact that some kids are going to be rocket scientists, some kids are going to write up their technical papers, and some kids are going to file those papers. And they shouldn’t have the same education for the first 18+ years of their lives.
We need to prepare kids to have a positive impact in our economy, not to be statistics and dollars in our universities.
posted by Jason at
11:58 AM
"I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear"
Friday, October 03, 2008
If you could dress a gunshot wound with a band-aid than Sarah Palin did indeed “stop the bleeding” last night, as many pundits insist. Here’s a person who, for the past several weeks, has proven that she is nothing more than a talking head that gets tripped-up by the easiest questions. And I’m not talking about Bush doctrine or relations with Pakistan – I’m talking about questions pertaining to what newspapers she reads or regarding Supreme Court cases that aren’t Roe v. Wade. She stood at a podium last night and read from index cards for close to two hours. She fumbled, bumbled, passed the buck, and could hardly respond to any questions directed towards her. She smiled when a discussion headed towards a topic that she had talking points on and she stalled and distracted when it didn’t. She was even mouthing the words to her responses while Biden was talking at times, obviously practicing some little vignette she just hobbled together from index card notes in order to respond to something that was said in the last exchange. She winked, she played cute, and she insulted the intelligence of the American people over and over again only to have Biden correct her with actual facts and numbers. When Biden delivered one of the most memorable moments of debate history by getting choked up while talking about his deceased wife and daughter and severely injured sons, Sarah Palin, who PRIDES herself on compassion and family values, didn’t even acknowledge what he said and, instead, went on about mavericks.
Sarah Palin was utterly trashed in last night’s debate. Joe Biden looked like the elder statesman. He didn’t come off as condescending or rude – he came off as knowledgeable. He had definitive answers for every question that was thrown his way and didn’t speak in broad generalities. He spoke from experience, from lessons learned, and from a new vision he partly adopted from Barack Obama.
Sarah Palin added fuel to the American people’s primary concern: if, God forbid, something where to happen to John McCain, could she step up as President?
If being president means reading the script someone else crafted to you at all times then, yes, Palin is ready to be president. If being president means you don’t even know the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan but you’re confident of what he didn’t say then, yes, Palin is ready to be president. If being president means you can respond to one issue by wagging the dog and bringing up another issue then, yes, Palin is ready to be president.
The debate honestly wasn’t what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a completely overt destruction of Sarah Palin. I was hoping for questions about Jesus walking with dinosaurs, about women having to pay for rape kits in Wasilla, and further clarification on exactly what kind of foreign policy advice John McCain has elicited from Palin “many times in the past.” Despite the fact that Palin’s defeat was a bit more subversive, I think the American people got it. This bait-and-switch, wag-the-dog style of politics isn’t going to cut it anymore. And Palin showed us that she’s still playing that game. She didn’t stop the bleeding, she just opened up new wounds.
Sarah Palin was utterly trashed in last night’s debate. Joe Biden looked like the elder statesman. He didn’t come off as condescending or rude – he came off as knowledgeable. He had definitive answers for every question that was thrown his way and didn’t speak in broad generalities. He spoke from experience, from lessons learned, and from a new vision he partly adopted from Barack Obama.
Sarah Palin added fuel to the American people’s primary concern: if, God forbid, something where to happen to John McCain, could she step up as President?
If being president means reading the script someone else crafted to you at all times then, yes, Palin is ready to be president. If being president means you don’t even know the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan but you’re confident of what he didn’t say then, yes, Palin is ready to be president. If being president means you can respond to one issue by wagging the dog and bringing up another issue then, yes, Palin is ready to be president.
The debate honestly wasn’t what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a completely overt destruction of Sarah Palin. I was hoping for questions about Jesus walking with dinosaurs, about women having to pay for rape kits in Wasilla, and further clarification on exactly what kind of foreign policy advice John McCain has elicited from Palin “many times in the past.” Despite the fact that Palin’s defeat was a bit more subversive, I think the American people got it. This bait-and-switch, wag-the-dog style of politics isn’t going to cut it anymore. And Palin showed us that she’s still playing that game. She didn’t stop the bleeding, she just opened up new wounds.
posted by Jason at
1:06 PM
It's the most wonderful time of the year
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Today I put politics and economics behind me and give my undivided attention to the MLB Playoffs. Even though my Mets choked again, there are four teams in the playoffs that I legitimately like this year:
1) The Red Sox because I lived around the corner from Fenway for four years and helped out by the fact that Robin's a die hard fan. When the Sox win she's happy and when she's happy...well..
2) The Cubs because it's hard for anyone who's not a White Sox fan to hate the Cubs. They're the Red Sox of 2004, the lovable losers, except they have better merchandise.
3) It's not the Brewers organization I like, it's the fact that they're a losing team from Milwaukee with a fanbase most under-500 teams couldn't even fathom. The Brewers don't shatter attendance records by any stretch of the imagination but in their 39-year history they only had the lowest league attendance ONCE despite being under .500 26 TIMES. I don't think they ever had the lowest MLB attendance. The Brewers have only had 13 "winning" seasons and yet they're not the poorest attended team in baseball. You have to appreciate that level of fan devotion.
4) The Dodgers. They left Brooklyn well before I was born but that didn't stop me from owning Brooklyn Dodgers' gear as a kid. Aside from some sort of lingering Brooklyn pride I'm in love with the fact that Torre took the Dodgers to the playoffs while the Yanks stayed home. Also, the prospect of Manny battling the Sox in the World Series is the second sexiest possible baseball story this year behind the Cubs battling the Sox in the World Series.
Ideally, I'd like to see Cubs/Brewers and Sox/Sox LCSs and a Cubs/Sox World Series. Realistically, I think we'll see:
1) Red Sox beating the Angels in 4. Angels might have owned the Sox in the regular season but the Sox have been legendary in the playoffs this decade and they've owned the Angels in October. The Sox are just too clutch, they have a better offense, and the Angels pitching staff teeters too close to the edge to deal with hot bats.
2) Tampa Bay sweeping the White Sox. T-Bay is this years Rockies - the team no-one gives a shit about that will look dominant in the playoffs only to get there asses kicked in the World Series. Now, I'm not saying the Rays will beat the Sox in the LCS but I definitely think they pose the biggest challenge. They're 13th in Batting Average, 8th in Slugging Percentage, 4th in Home Runs, 2nd in strikeouts, 9th in RBIs, 5th in OBP, 2nd in ERA but just two places ahead of the Red Sox, and yet they have 97 wins and won the division. That's the definition of scrappy and clutch, right there.
3) Cubs over Dodgers in 5. This one's going the distance, I think. Drama with gravitate to the Cubs this October and too many members of the Dodgers have something to prove.
4) Phillies sweep the Brewers. I really hope I'm wrong about this one. I really, really hope I'm wrong. But Sabathia gets his start in Philly, which is tough, and then the Brewers pitching staff falls off considerably. If the Brewers can stretch it to a Game 5 and Sabathia gets his second start, they have a chance. If Sabathia loses Game 2, however, this series is over.
But, you know, as long as it's not a Phillies/Tampa Bay World Series I'd be happy.
1) The Red Sox because I lived around the corner from Fenway for four years and helped out by the fact that Robin's a die hard fan. When the Sox win she's happy and when she's happy...well..
2) The Cubs because it's hard for anyone who's not a White Sox fan to hate the Cubs. They're the Red Sox of 2004, the lovable losers, except they have better merchandise.
3) It's not the Brewers organization I like, it's the fact that they're a losing team from Milwaukee with a fanbase most under-500 teams couldn't even fathom. The Brewers don't shatter attendance records by any stretch of the imagination but in their 39-year history they only had the lowest league attendance ONCE despite being under .500 26 TIMES. I don't think they ever had the lowest MLB attendance. The Brewers have only had 13 "winning" seasons and yet they're not the poorest attended team in baseball. You have to appreciate that level of fan devotion.
4) The Dodgers. They left Brooklyn well before I was born but that didn't stop me from owning Brooklyn Dodgers' gear as a kid. Aside from some sort of lingering Brooklyn pride I'm in love with the fact that Torre took the Dodgers to the playoffs while the Yanks stayed home. Also, the prospect of Manny battling the Sox in the World Series is the second sexiest possible baseball story this year behind the Cubs battling the Sox in the World Series.
Ideally, I'd like to see Cubs/Brewers and Sox/Sox LCSs and a Cubs/Sox World Series. Realistically, I think we'll see:
1) Red Sox beating the Angels in 4. Angels might have owned the Sox in the regular season but the Sox have been legendary in the playoffs this decade and they've owned the Angels in October. The Sox are just too clutch, they have a better offense, and the Angels pitching staff teeters too close to the edge to deal with hot bats.
2) Tampa Bay sweeping the White Sox. T-Bay is this years Rockies - the team no-one gives a shit about that will look dominant in the playoffs only to get there asses kicked in the World Series. Now, I'm not saying the Rays will beat the Sox in the LCS but I definitely think they pose the biggest challenge. They're 13th in Batting Average, 8th in Slugging Percentage, 4th in Home Runs, 2nd in strikeouts, 9th in RBIs, 5th in OBP, 2nd in ERA but just two places ahead of the Red Sox, and yet they have 97 wins and won the division. That's the definition of scrappy and clutch, right there.
3) Cubs over Dodgers in 5. This one's going the distance, I think. Drama with gravitate to the Cubs this October and too many members of the Dodgers have something to prove.
4) Phillies sweep the Brewers. I really hope I'm wrong about this one. I really, really hope I'm wrong. But Sabathia gets his start in Philly, which is tough, and then the Brewers pitching staff falls off considerably. If the Brewers can stretch it to a Game 5 and Sabathia gets his second start, they have a chance. If Sabathia loses Game 2, however, this series is over.
But, you know, as long as it's not a Phillies/Tampa Bay World Series I'd be happy.
posted by Jason at
8:19 AM
Congress is Broken
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Max Cascone, a buddy of mine from college, pointed out that my post on voting out those in Congress that voted against the bailout (along with Pelosi and Frank for their comments) was contradictory to an early post where I talk about better things to do with $700-billion. I explained my position in the comments section but I wanted to take a couple of minutes to address it on the blog.
The bailout plan was a beast. It was an a-bomb when a scalpel was required. It’s true that I don’t support the bailout plan and I think there are much more productive ways to rescue the economy – ways that look towards the future instead of trying to delay the inevitable. But I also understand that there is no leadership in the White House, at the moment, no common ground in the congress or senate, either. I also understand that the best we can get, right now, is an influx of money – something to keep it all going while we work it all out later on. I believe that action can’t wait until January, confidence in the market is clutch, and if we don’t show some sort of unity and movement now things are going to get really, really bad.
The plan would put $250-billion into defaulted assets now, an optional $350-billion later on, and $100-billion to be used at the President’s discretion. Maybe it’s the optimist in me, but I think the plan is mainly symbolic; $250-billion would go in now, increase confidence, and then Obama can rejigger and pass a more productive bailout with the rest of the money.
But here’s what really upset me about the bailout not passing – it shows a complete inability of our congress to work for the American people and the American economy. And Pelosi’s speech was condescending and unnecessary and Frank’s comments after the fact where almost a challenge to the Republicans not to pass the bill. And the Republicans who voted against it because of Pelosi’s comments were also acting childish but they were all included in my Nay List, obviously. Basically, we had something that could at least restore some level of confidence in the economy but, instead, we showed that we can function, we can not work together, and that we are a house that is seriously divided. If we can’t pass this plan, this clunky, monster of a plan, how can we pass a plan that’s more robust and progressive?
Look, the whole situation is enormously fucked up. The Bush administration has seriously hurt our infrastructure and our ability to lead in the 21st century.
I guess there’s also the fact that I fucking hate Congress and I’ll take any opportunity to shit on them. Seriously. I hate the idea and the structure of Congress. There are too many Congressmen and women that come from small districts. They never even left their country or visited another region of the states or even considered a different viewpoint. They don’t have the tools or the knowledge or the resources to make decisions on things like how to prevent the global economy from collapsing. Go look at previous experiences of House members – journalist, insurance executive, ship captain, lawyer, pharmacist, farmer, optometrist, investment banker, engineer, nurse, teacher – it’s a fucking focus group. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but the fact is 25% of our Congress is Sarah Palin and I rarely give them the benefit of the doubt.
I’m rambling now and I can probably ramble for hours on this. The fact is that our House is a mess and it couldn’t even rally the sheep to vote for something that’s not perfect but it’s the best we’re going to get right now. And it’s only going to get worse, as the “Good ‘Ole Boy (or Girl)” persona continues to dominate our political landscape.
I think that explains it a little bit, at least. Of course, I change my opinion on a day-to-day basis so a little nudge in the comments could have me recanting this tomorrow.
The bailout plan was a beast. It was an a-bomb when a scalpel was required. It’s true that I don’t support the bailout plan and I think there are much more productive ways to rescue the economy – ways that look towards the future instead of trying to delay the inevitable. But I also understand that there is no leadership in the White House, at the moment, no common ground in the congress or senate, either. I also understand that the best we can get, right now, is an influx of money – something to keep it all going while we work it all out later on. I believe that action can’t wait until January, confidence in the market is clutch, and if we don’t show some sort of unity and movement now things are going to get really, really bad.
The plan would put $250-billion into defaulted assets now, an optional $350-billion later on, and $100-billion to be used at the President’s discretion. Maybe it’s the optimist in me, but I think the plan is mainly symbolic; $250-billion would go in now, increase confidence, and then Obama can rejigger and pass a more productive bailout with the rest of the money.
But here’s what really upset me about the bailout not passing – it shows a complete inability of our congress to work for the American people and the American economy. And Pelosi’s speech was condescending and unnecessary and Frank’s comments after the fact where almost a challenge to the Republicans not to pass the bill. And the Republicans who voted against it because of Pelosi’s comments were also acting childish but they were all included in my Nay List, obviously. Basically, we had something that could at least restore some level of confidence in the economy but, instead, we showed that we can function, we can not work together, and that we are a house that is seriously divided. If we can’t pass this plan, this clunky, monster of a plan, how can we pass a plan that’s more robust and progressive?
Look, the whole situation is enormously fucked up. The Bush administration has seriously hurt our infrastructure and our ability to lead in the 21st century.
I guess there’s also the fact that I fucking hate Congress and I’ll take any opportunity to shit on them. Seriously. I hate the idea and the structure of Congress. There are too many Congressmen and women that come from small districts. They never even left their country or visited another region of the states or even considered a different viewpoint. They don’t have the tools or the knowledge or the resources to make decisions on things like how to prevent the global economy from collapsing. Go look at previous experiences of House members – journalist, insurance executive, ship captain, lawyer, pharmacist, farmer, optometrist, investment banker, engineer, nurse, teacher – it’s a fucking focus group. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but the fact is 25% of our Congress is Sarah Palin and I rarely give them the benefit of the doubt.
I’m rambling now and I can probably ramble for hours on this. The fact is that our House is a mess and it couldn’t even rally the sheep to vote for something that’s not perfect but it’s the best we’re going to get right now. And it’s only going to get worse, as the “Good ‘Ole Boy (or Girl)” persona continues to dominate our political landscape.
I think that explains it a little bit, at least. Of course, I change my opinion on a day-to-day basis so a little nudge in the comments could have me recanting this tomorrow.
posted by Jason at
9:30 AM
If I Had $700-Billion...
Sunday, September 28, 2008
I’ve been staying away from the economy because, well, it’s not funny. But the bailout package makes me kind of sick, and over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about better ways to invest $700-billion in order to bolster our economy. None of these are final solutions, but I think they’re at least halfway decent starting points. All of these ideas are aimed towards increasing the Government kitty while creating new jobs or protecting homeowners. I’m sure we could even combine most of these programs.
1 – A Manhattan-project style effort to develop alternative energies and decrease our dependence on foreign oil in order to create new jobs at home and decrease our involvement and capital in the Middle East.
2 – Venture capital for tens-of-thousands of innovative new businesses that, in turn, participate in a 20-year tiered profit sharing initiative on top of usual taxes.
3 – The outright purchase of defaulted real estate from failed mortgage lenders and the selling/refinancing of those homes with 15-30/45-year mortgages respectively, solely at the federal interest rate.
4 – A new loan program for students entering technical programs that guarantees low interest rates in exchange for high GPAs at accredited universities.
5 – Large tax credits for Americans whose research leads to scientific innovation and publication in peer-reviewed journals.
6 –Tax credits for companies that only employ American taxpayers and additional tax credits if all employees at said company are some percentage above the minimum wage. Accompany this with tax penalties for companies that outsource jobs that could be done by Americans.
7 – Increased funding for the Small Business Innovation Research program and Small Business Technology Transfer Program, particularly for non-defense based projects.
I know it’s too late and I know my blog that’s read by a hundred people really couldn’t do much even if I published these ideas weeks ago but, whatever, I figured I’ll start crafting my platform for my 2016 congressional run.
1 – A Manhattan-project style effort to develop alternative energies and decrease our dependence on foreign oil in order to create new jobs at home and decrease our involvement and capital in the Middle East.
2 – Venture capital for tens-of-thousands of innovative new businesses that, in turn, participate in a 20-year tiered profit sharing initiative on top of usual taxes.
3 – The outright purchase of defaulted real estate from failed mortgage lenders and the selling/refinancing of those homes with 15-30/45-year mortgages respectively, solely at the federal interest rate.
4 – A new loan program for students entering technical programs that guarantees low interest rates in exchange for high GPAs at accredited universities.
5 – Large tax credits for Americans whose research leads to scientific innovation and publication in peer-reviewed journals.
6 –Tax credits for companies that only employ American taxpayers and additional tax credits if all employees at said company are some percentage above the minimum wage. Accompany this with tax penalties for companies that outsource jobs that could be done by Americans.
7 – Increased funding for the Small Business Innovation Research program and Small Business Technology Transfer Program, particularly for non-defense based projects.
I know it’s too late and I know my blog that’s read by a hundred people really couldn’t do much even if I published these ideas weeks ago but, whatever, I figured I’ll start crafting my platform for my 2016 congressional run.
posted by Jason at
10:00 PM
Putting Fox News in Context
Thursday, September 25, 2008
FoxNews.com is such a blatant sounding board for the GOP it makes their TV channel look like The Daily Show. I especially love their main page; it sensationalizes quotes, backs off on the item page, and then buries the full quote in the text somewhere. On one-hand, I can understand the need to get a high click through to increase ad-revenue, etc. On the other-hand, these headlines are always constructed to make Democrats look bad and give the GOP-base talking points to use in everyday conversation. Two examples below, I’ll post more as I come across them…
Headline: “I Get Why She’s Hot”
Item Page Headline: Bill Clinton Says He Understands Palin’s Appeal
Context: Bill was saying he understands why people in the heartland can relate to Palin. “I come from Arkansas, I get why she’s hot out there, why she’s doing well.”
What FoxNews.com wants you to think: That Bill wants to put his dick in Sarah Palin. Granted, he probably does, but this quote had nothing to do with that.
Headline: Gore Goes Gandhi
Item Page Headline: Al Gore Urges 'Civil Disobedience' Toward Coal Plants
Context: Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, Al Gore said, "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,"
What FoxNews.com wants you to think: That Al Gore is an uppity, hippy terrorist, much like Gandhi and MLK JR.
Headline: “I Get Why She’s Hot”Item Page Headline: Bill Clinton Says He Understands Palin’s Appeal
Context: Bill was saying he understands why people in the heartland can relate to Palin. “I come from Arkansas, I get why she’s hot out there, why she’s doing well.”
What FoxNews.com wants you to think: That Bill wants to put his dick in Sarah Palin. Granted, he probably does, but this quote had nothing to do with that.
Headline: Gore Goes GandhiItem Page Headline: Al Gore Urges 'Civil Disobedience' Toward Coal Plants
Context: Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, Al Gore said, "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,"
What FoxNews.com wants you to think: That Al Gore is an uppity, hippy terrorist, much like Gandhi and MLK JR.
posted by Jason at
5:45 AM
I can’t even comprehend that The Washington Times exists
Friday, September 19, 2008
Robin and I were on the train yesterday, coming home from the Mets game (or, as you Nats fans like to call it, the Nats game). We’re sitting there, staring across the car at this add for the Washington Times when Robin says to me, “The other day I realized the Washington Times is a GOP rag. I don’t know what took me so long to realize that.”
I gave her a confused look and replied, “What are you talking about? The Post is one of the most liberal papers in the country!”
“Not the Post, the Times.”
“The Times?”
“The Times.”
“I completely forgot the Times even existed.”
Despite living in DC for 8 years, working with various area papers, and being a bit of a newshound I couldn’t even comprehend the existence of the Times despite the fact that I was looking right an ad for the Times. I even heard Robin say “Times” and substituted “Post.”
So I went to the Times website and Robin’s right – totally a GOP rag. It sells one-seventh of the amount of papers that the Post sells (in the interest of fairness, I’ll categorize the Post as a liberal rag but it’s my liberal rag and I love it to death). I don’t understand how a paper like the Times can exist in one of the most liberal areas in all of America. The answer is: It can’t.
According to Wikipedia (ok, ok – I didn’t have time to do real research, shoot me) the Times has received billions of dollars in subsidiaries from its founder, Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, since its 1982 inception. Sun seems to believe the Times is his heavenly calling, claiming that, “The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.”
I wanted to go out and buy a copy of the times today, just to see what its stories were like, and I couldn’t find a copy. I will get one, however – hopefully the Sunday edition – just to see how bad the paper is. But that’s beside the point and here’s the real question: Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about The Washington Times yet? I’d pay good money to see a flick about a church leader with not newspaper experience trying to tear down the liberal institution that is Washington DC by putting billions of dollars into a rag that people who live here forget exists. That’s a great story!
I gave her a confused look and replied, “What are you talking about? The Post is one of the most liberal papers in the country!”
“Not the Post, the Times.”
“The Times?”
“The Times.”
“I completely forgot the Times even existed.”
Despite living in DC for 8 years, working with various area papers, and being a bit of a newshound I couldn’t even comprehend the existence of the Times despite the fact that I was looking right an ad for the Times. I even heard Robin say “Times” and substituted “Post.”
So I went to the Times website and Robin’s right – totally a GOP rag. It sells one-seventh of the amount of papers that the Post sells (in the interest of fairness, I’ll categorize the Post as a liberal rag but it’s my liberal rag and I love it to death). I don’t understand how a paper like the Times can exist in one of the most liberal areas in all of America. The answer is: It can’t.
According to Wikipedia (ok, ok – I didn’t have time to do real research, shoot me) the Times has received billions of dollars in subsidiaries from its founder, Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, since its 1982 inception. Sun seems to believe the Times is his heavenly calling, claiming that, “The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.”
I wanted to go out and buy a copy of the times today, just to see what its stories were like, and I couldn’t find a copy. I will get one, however – hopefully the Sunday edition – just to see how bad the paper is. But that’s beside the point and here’s the real question: Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about The Washington Times yet? I’d pay good money to see a flick about a church leader with not newspaper experience trying to tear down the liberal institution that is Washington DC by putting billions of dollars into a rag that people who live here forget exists. That’s a great story!
posted by Jason at
10:45 AM
A New Jason Rodriguez
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A couple of months ago the New York Times included me in a fluff-piece on Google Twins. Gawker poked fun at the article in a post that ended with, “So screw you, ‘Jon Lee’ and ‘Jason Rodriguez.’” Being mentioned on Gawker was probably the second greatest moment of my life (unless they were talking about some other Jason Rodriguez), right behind the LA Times reviewing Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened and treating it as if it was supposed to be a long-lost project discovered on Luis Buñuel’s estate.
So why do I bring this up? Because I just discovered there’s another Jason Rodriguez in town, and this one is dangerously close to my brand.
Look, no-one’s confusing me with Jason Rodriguez, stuntman extraordinaire. No-one’s confusing me with the Jason Rodriguez from marketingwire.net. Nor is anyone confusing me with the Jason Rodriguez who got a 26-year prison sentence for stealing some ice cream cones. But this new Jason Rodriguez (owner of http://www.jasonrodriguez.net, just a .com away from my domain) is really pushing it. His website, which is dedicated to his “Art & Design” portfolio, shows that he’s encroaching on my position as Comic’s Jason Rodriguez. Maybe “Art & Design” and “comics” are still several degrees removed but what if he starts doing design work or lettering for comics? What if he becomes known as Comics’ Other Jason Rodriguez or, worse yet, Comics’ Attractive Jason Rodriguez? Seriously, look at this guy:
That’s one good-looking guy. He has more hair than me, his beard fits him better, and he obviously weighs less than me. He’s the kind of guy that used to whip out his acoustic guitar during home room, guaranteeing him a shot at the prom queen if he wasn’t already going with the hippy chick. I can’t compete with that! Look at me:
I’m the guy that had a second serving of chili in high school. I’m the guy that was loitering outside of the girls’ bathroom.
Fuck - MY COLLAR IS POPPED IN THAT PICTURE!
This is troubling me. I hope this new Jason Rodriguez stays away from my Podunk medium. Seriously, all the best to him, I hope he’s fast-tracked to working full-time for The New Yorker. Because, if not, it’s only a matter of time before I take on the moniker of Comics’ Hideous Jason Rodriguez.
So why do I bring this up? Because I just discovered there’s another Jason Rodriguez in town, and this one is dangerously close to my brand.
Look, no-one’s confusing me with Jason Rodriguez, stuntman extraordinaire. No-one’s confusing me with the Jason Rodriguez from marketingwire.net. Nor is anyone confusing me with the Jason Rodriguez who got a 26-year prison sentence for stealing some ice cream cones. But this new Jason Rodriguez (owner of http://www.jasonrodriguez.net, just a .com away from my domain) is really pushing it. His website, which is dedicated to his “Art & Design” portfolio, shows that he’s encroaching on my position as Comic’s Jason Rodriguez. Maybe “Art & Design” and “comics” are still several degrees removed but what if he starts doing design work or lettering for comics? What if he becomes known as Comics’ Other Jason Rodriguez or, worse yet, Comics’ Attractive Jason Rodriguez? Seriously, look at this guy:
That’s one good-looking guy. He has more hair than me, his beard fits him better, and he obviously weighs less than me. He’s the kind of guy that used to whip out his acoustic guitar during home room, guaranteeing him a shot at the prom queen if he wasn’t already going with the hippy chick. I can’t compete with that! Look at me:
I’m the guy that had a second serving of chili in high school. I’m the guy that was loitering outside of the girls’ bathroom.
Fuck - MY COLLAR IS POPPED IN THAT PICTURE!
This is troubling me. I hope this new Jason Rodriguez stays away from my Podunk medium. Seriously, all the best to him, I hope he’s fast-tracked to working full-time for The New Yorker. Because, if not, it’s only a matter of time before I take on the moniker of Comics’ Hideous Jason Rodriguez.
posted by Jason at
4:37 PM
2008 Election: The Comic Book
Friday, September 12, 2008
The 2008 election relies on one of the fundamental requirements of superhero comis: a willing suspension of disbelief. It has been a topsy-turvy cluster-fuck of an election that would never fly as nonfiction. If Grant Morrison (one of our most existential and Dadaistic writers) was to have a baby with Mark Millar (one of our most ham-fisted action-minded writers) and that baby was to grow up and become a comic writer, said baby wouldn’t even be able to write a fictional comic book storyline on par with the 2008 election. But is a willing suspension of disbelief enough to make the 2008 election a superhero comic? I think there would be several key changes to move the election to the comic world, primarily with the back stories and motivations of our main political players. For instance…
Barack Obama
The young politician with a promising future. The black son of a single parent. The ability to excite the poor and disenfranchised, the minorities and the young. Barack Obama is the living embodiment of the American Promise that inspires people to reach their full potential and love what this country could be someday.
In superhero comics, Barack Obama would be…
…the king of a fictional African Kingdom. In comics, black heroes are either reformed street thugs that stick to their neighborhoods (Luke Cage) or African royalty (Black Panther). And, in Storm’s case, she’s African royalty that became a common street thug that became a hero that became African royalty. If Obama was a comic book hero he’d have went to live with his dad in Kenya, only to find out later on that he’s the rightful heir of some secret kingdom.
John McCain
The war hero. He spent five-and-a-half years in a POW camp, undergoing endless torture, all-the-while refusing to cave to the demands of his ruthless captors. He came back to the states and thrust himself into politics, never tiring in his work for this country; he’s on a mission to reform a corrupt political system.
In superhero comics, John McCain would be…
…a super villain. It would be revealed in the third act and the presidency would not be decided by a vote, it would be decided by blood. In comics, tortured souls move on to become sympathetic villains, the kind that see the error of their ways and then sacrifice themselves to save the world from their own doomsday device. John McCain would follow the Magneto model; a concentration camp survivor who saw how evil the world could be and said, “Fuck it – I’m going to kill every last one of these mother fuckers.”
Sarah Palin
Say what you will about her politics – Sarah Palin is the first women to excite 50% of America’s white males WITHOUT being on a “Chicks With Guns”-style calendar. She’s ambitious, fast-tracked to be a power player in American politics, plays well to crowds, and electrifies audiences in a way that has made it almost impossible for Democrats to attack her.
In superhero comics, Sarah Palin would be…
…raped or murdered. I know that sounds horrible but violence against women is all-the-rage in comics. It sometimes feels like editorial sits down and says, “Hey, we need something to kick-off this big summer event – who haven’t we raped yet?” Sarah Palin could also be the bad-ass femme-fatal with two swords and a tight body suit but few characters get there without being raped, molested, or beaten to a bloody pulp by an ex-boyfriend.
Joe Biden
The longtime senator from Delaware. The champion of liberal values and ideals. The man who tries to keep politics front-and-center and often berates his opponents’ media-plays with snappy one-liners. He’s the elder statesman, the Wiseman, the person you’d rely on to do what it takes to get the job done, even if that means going against popular opinion.
In superhero comics, Joe Biden would be…
…the Canadian Prime Minister, a super villain, or an assassinated Senator. It’s hard to tell where Biden would go. If the writer were to stick to the Biden-script he’d either be a foreign politician (because there are few incorrupt American politicians in comics) or an assassinated Senator (because the incorrupt American politicians are killed in the first act).The other option would be to make him a super villain, hiding his true motives until the third act, much like McCain. The only reason I’m leaning away from this option, however, is because Biden wasn’t tortured in his younger years.
There’d be some other, minor changes, if the 2008 election took place in the superhero comics-world. Fox News would be Faux News and MSNBC would be MSDNC. Hillary Clinton would walk around kicking guys in their balls every issue and Bill would spend most of the time in his boxer shorts. Huckabee would be the leader of a cult and Mitt Romney would actually be a robot. Finally, Joe Lieberman would be a traitor to his party and commit career suicide during a nationally televised event…oh…wait…
Barack Obama
The young politician with a promising future. The black son of a single parent. The ability to excite the poor and disenfranchised, the minorities and the young. Barack Obama is the living embodiment of the American Promise that inspires people to reach their full potential and love what this country could be someday.
In superhero comics, Barack Obama would be…
…the king of a fictional African Kingdom. In comics, black heroes are either reformed street thugs that stick to their neighborhoods (Luke Cage) or African royalty (Black Panther). And, in Storm’s case, she’s African royalty that became a common street thug that became a hero that became African royalty. If Obama was a comic book hero he’d have went to live with his dad in Kenya, only to find out later on that he’s the rightful heir of some secret kingdom.
John McCain
The war hero. He spent five-and-a-half years in a POW camp, undergoing endless torture, all-the-while refusing to cave to the demands of his ruthless captors. He came back to the states and thrust himself into politics, never tiring in his work for this country; he’s on a mission to reform a corrupt political system.
In superhero comics, John McCain would be…
…a super villain. It would be revealed in the third act and the presidency would not be decided by a vote, it would be decided by blood. In comics, tortured souls move on to become sympathetic villains, the kind that see the error of their ways and then sacrifice themselves to save the world from their own doomsday device. John McCain would follow the Magneto model; a concentration camp survivor who saw how evil the world could be and said, “Fuck it – I’m going to kill every last one of these mother fuckers.”
Sarah Palin
Say what you will about her politics – Sarah Palin is the first women to excite 50% of America’s white males WITHOUT being on a “Chicks With Guns”-style calendar. She’s ambitious, fast-tracked to be a power player in American politics, plays well to crowds, and electrifies audiences in a way that has made it almost impossible for Democrats to attack her.
In superhero comics, Sarah Palin would be…
…raped or murdered. I know that sounds horrible but violence against women is all-the-rage in comics. It sometimes feels like editorial sits down and says, “Hey, we need something to kick-off this big summer event – who haven’t we raped yet?” Sarah Palin could also be the bad-ass femme-fatal with two swords and a tight body suit but few characters get there without being raped, molested, or beaten to a bloody pulp by an ex-boyfriend.
Joe Biden
The longtime senator from Delaware. The champion of liberal values and ideals. The man who tries to keep politics front-and-center and often berates his opponents’ media-plays with snappy one-liners. He’s the elder statesman, the Wiseman, the person you’d rely on to do what it takes to get the job done, even if that means going against popular opinion.
In superhero comics, Joe Biden would be…
…the Canadian Prime Minister, a super villain, or an assassinated Senator. It’s hard to tell where Biden would go. If the writer were to stick to the Biden-script he’d either be a foreign politician (because there are few incorrupt American politicians in comics) or an assassinated Senator (because the incorrupt American politicians are killed in the first act).The other option would be to make him a super villain, hiding his true motives until the third act, much like McCain. The only reason I’m leaning away from this option, however, is because Biden wasn’t tortured in his younger years.
There’d be some other, minor changes, if the 2008 election took place in the superhero comics-world. Fox News would be Faux News and MSNBC would be MSDNC. Hillary Clinton would walk around kicking guys in their balls every issue and Bill would spend most of the time in his boxer shorts. Huckabee would be the leader of a cult and Mitt Romney would actually be a robot. Finally, Joe Lieberman would be a traitor to his party and commit career suicide during a nationally televised event…oh…wait…
posted by Jason at
8:48 AM
Seven Years Later
Thursday, September 11, 2008
I got to work early on September 11, 2001. At the time I was working out in Reston, Virginia. I went to the deli downstairs with my friend Max for some breakfast when the news that the first tower was hit came over the television. We laughed about it. I know that sounds like a horrible thing but the idea of plane hitting one of the Twin Towers was just so absurd when we first heard it. It didn’t seem real at all – the potential loss of life wasn’t even considered at first. We thought it was a little prop plane that went up against the mighty skyscraper and lost. Being native New Yorkers ourselves, we knew about the time a B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building. That B-25 bomber drove right into the upper floors, killing only 14 people. What kind of damage could a little plane possibly make to the Towers?
Then the TV said it was a commercial airliner. Then the TV said a second plane crashed into the second tower. And it wasn’t funny anymore. I think Max said “terrorism” first, a word that will dominate every conversation for months to come. We went back to the office to call our friends and family in New York and try to get an idea of what’s going on over there. By the time we got upstairs there were already TVs and radios in every office reporting the crashes. I kept trying to call my mom, my dad, my friend Gennaro – all circuits were busy. Someone came into my office and told me a plane crashed into the Pentagon and I didn’t even think twice: I call Robin.
At the time we were living across the river from the Pentagon. I knew Robin went to work already, but she worked in DC and she was too close to whatever was happening. I called and called and called and got nothing but busy signals and “all circuits are busy” messages. I went into our main conference room to watch the news on TV, attempting to call everyone I knew from NYC and DC to make sure they’re safe.
Robin’s mom called me. She wanted to know if Robin was alright. I told her I was trying to get in touch with her and I’d let her know as soon as possible. I finally get in touch with my mom – she’s hysterical. My parents live in Red Hook, Brooklyn, directly across the river from the towers. My father was actually in Brooklyn Heights that morning which is basically as close as you can get to the towers from the Brooklyn side. He was heading out to my sister’s High School to pick her up. I calmed my mom down and finally got in touch with Robin.
At this point the news organizations were losing their minds. There were reports of truck bombs at the State Building, attacks against the White House (which was later reported as an attempted attack on the White House by Flight 93), mysterious gases and smells all over downtown DC. I told her to sit tight because her job seemed to be a lot safer than our apartment at the moment.
The towers fell – I watched it live. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was another selfish moment where I didn’t even consider the loss of life – I thought about the skyline I enjoyed from the roof of my parents’ apartment and how it would never be the same again. But that’s what happens when a symbol is attacked, lives become secondary.
Phone calls started trickling in from friends and family members. Everyone seemed to be alright and I considered myself lucky for that.
Once the frenzy settled down Max and I made our way back into DC. All of the major roadways were a mess so we took back roads into the district. Chain Bridge to Embassy Row – there were big guards with big guns stationed in front of every building, eyeing us as we drove by. Robin was home before me – she took the metro home despite my concerns. Turns out there was one death in our family on that day – Robin’s Grandfather died but it wasn’t tied to the events of September 11th. In fact, her family kept quiet, not wanting a WWII veteran to know what was happening to his country on what seemed to be his last day alive.
I made the first of many mistakes by suggesting we didn’t take the trip to Framingham for the funeral. We didn’t have a car at the time, airlines were grounded, and Amtrak was pegged with people stranded in NYC, DC, and Boston. Those were the practical reasons for staying put – the underlying reason was the fear. What comes next? An assault on the rail system? That seemed to make the most sense.
That fear guided a lot of decisions over the next couple of weeks and months. Overthrow the Taliban? Hell, I was for that before 9/11 and I’m certainly for it now. Overthrow Saddam? Did you see Powell’s briefing? Do it and do it now. We also bought the “Go out and shop” line. We bought a car. We bought some new clothes and cell phones and some new furniture. We bought a lot of stuff – mainly bullshit – but I’m over that now.
I would constantly hit refresh on CNN.com – I don’t think I got any work done for months. We moved out of DC once our lease was up, moved into Arlington because it was safer. Lee Highway and Glebe Road, a little pocket of nothing. We stayed in that apartment for three years before moving to Rosslyn, within walking distance of Georgetown. At that point we just learned to love Arlington. I also changed careers. I moved out of acoustics and into chemical and biological defense planning, scenario development, and crisis management. Remember bird flu? My analysis of avian influenza was briefed to the President (by someone else, of course). Sorry it got blown out of proportion (a year later, admittedly, and probably having nothing to do with my analysis). You know that guy that probably mailed the anthrax letters? My group worked with him in the past, before my time, admittedly. My new job does good work and we plan for the unthinkable. Believe me; I’m glad it’s only used for sensationalized scenarios and the occasional dog wagging. I’d hate to have it used for anything else.
But my new career did help me deal with the fear. It gives me an understanding of what’s possible, how bad it would be, and how we should deal with it. Understanding the situation, despite how horrible, allows you to cope with it and move on. I still have nightmares, don’t get me wrong. Horrible, horrible nightmares. Nuclear explosions, burning flesh, hijacked planes, chemical caches – I dream about them almost every night.
And that brings me to today, seven years later. Nightmares, asymmetrical warfare planning, and all. And comic books! I can’t forget comic books, My childhood escapism turned into adult escapism. I have to admit, it burns me up to see images of the towers and the pentagon play at the RNC while the speakers take shots at the “elitist East.” To see folks from the corn and bible-belts chanting USA, ragging on us liberals that lived through September 11th, whose lives were drastically changed and still live with a touch of fear on a day-to-day basis, yet using the tragedy as a war cry.
It’s funny – in 2000 I was a McCain supporter. A registered Independent, social liberal, and fiscal conservative. Over the past seven years my love for this country (and the people in it) has grown significantly. I’ve traveled all over the US with my job, met all kinds of people from all types of backgrounds. We have a wonderfully diverse country with hundreds of millions of interesting stories. And yet we’re being torn apart by divisive politics and lies. I fall into it too, sometimes, more often than I should. It’s hard to keep a clear head when both sides grind you down. I do believe this country stands at a cross-road, however. There are too many problems facing us that we’ve been ignoring for far too long. I do believe we’re going to need someone who isn’t afraid to think completely outside the box, who can unify this country, and who can finally move us beyond a Tuesday in September seven years ago and look towards the future.
Hopefully on September 11th, 2009 I can come back to this blog and talk about our recovering economy, baby boomers retiring and having money to live on, new jobs as a result of energy advancements, and promising new medications and treatments that result from our government getting out of the way of science. Hopefully I can talk about America taking a leadership roll in the world again and our improving position in the global economy. Hopefully we can begin to make amends as a country, find common ground, and stop sacrificing our future for tabloid-style politics.
Hopefully.
Then the TV said it was a commercial airliner. Then the TV said a second plane crashed into the second tower. And it wasn’t funny anymore. I think Max said “terrorism” first, a word that will dominate every conversation for months to come. We went back to the office to call our friends and family in New York and try to get an idea of what’s going on over there. By the time we got upstairs there were already TVs and radios in every office reporting the crashes. I kept trying to call my mom, my dad, my friend Gennaro – all circuits were busy. Someone came into my office and told me a plane crashed into the Pentagon and I didn’t even think twice: I call Robin.
At the time we were living across the river from the Pentagon. I knew Robin went to work already, but she worked in DC and she was too close to whatever was happening. I called and called and called and got nothing but busy signals and “all circuits are busy” messages. I went into our main conference room to watch the news on TV, attempting to call everyone I knew from NYC and DC to make sure they’re safe.
Robin’s mom called me. She wanted to know if Robin was alright. I told her I was trying to get in touch with her and I’d let her know as soon as possible. I finally get in touch with my mom – she’s hysterical. My parents live in Red Hook, Brooklyn, directly across the river from the towers. My father was actually in Brooklyn Heights that morning which is basically as close as you can get to the towers from the Brooklyn side. He was heading out to my sister’s High School to pick her up. I calmed my mom down and finally got in touch with Robin.
At this point the news organizations were losing their minds. There were reports of truck bombs at the State Building, attacks against the White House (which was later reported as an attempted attack on the White House by Flight 93), mysterious gases and smells all over downtown DC. I told her to sit tight because her job seemed to be a lot safer than our apartment at the moment.
The towers fell – I watched it live. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was another selfish moment where I didn’t even consider the loss of life – I thought about the skyline I enjoyed from the roof of my parents’ apartment and how it would never be the same again. But that’s what happens when a symbol is attacked, lives become secondary.
Phone calls started trickling in from friends and family members. Everyone seemed to be alright and I considered myself lucky for that.
Once the frenzy settled down Max and I made our way back into DC. All of the major roadways were a mess so we took back roads into the district. Chain Bridge to Embassy Row – there were big guards with big guns stationed in front of every building, eyeing us as we drove by. Robin was home before me – she took the metro home despite my concerns. Turns out there was one death in our family on that day – Robin’s Grandfather died but it wasn’t tied to the events of September 11th. In fact, her family kept quiet, not wanting a WWII veteran to know what was happening to his country on what seemed to be his last day alive.
I made the first of many mistakes by suggesting we didn’t take the trip to Framingham for the funeral. We didn’t have a car at the time, airlines were grounded, and Amtrak was pegged with people stranded in NYC, DC, and Boston. Those were the practical reasons for staying put – the underlying reason was the fear. What comes next? An assault on the rail system? That seemed to make the most sense.
That fear guided a lot of decisions over the next couple of weeks and months. Overthrow the Taliban? Hell, I was for that before 9/11 and I’m certainly for it now. Overthrow Saddam? Did you see Powell’s briefing? Do it and do it now. We also bought the “Go out and shop” line. We bought a car. We bought some new clothes and cell phones and some new furniture. We bought a lot of stuff – mainly bullshit – but I’m over that now.
I would constantly hit refresh on CNN.com – I don’t think I got any work done for months. We moved out of DC once our lease was up, moved into Arlington because it was safer. Lee Highway and Glebe Road, a little pocket of nothing. We stayed in that apartment for three years before moving to Rosslyn, within walking distance of Georgetown. At that point we just learned to love Arlington. I also changed careers. I moved out of acoustics and into chemical and biological defense planning, scenario development, and crisis management. Remember bird flu? My analysis of avian influenza was briefed to the President (by someone else, of course). Sorry it got blown out of proportion (a year later, admittedly, and probably having nothing to do with my analysis). You know that guy that probably mailed the anthrax letters? My group worked with him in the past, before my time, admittedly. My new job does good work and we plan for the unthinkable. Believe me; I’m glad it’s only used for sensationalized scenarios and the occasional dog wagging. I’d hate to have it used for anything else.
But my new career did help me deal with the fear. It gives me an understanding of what’s possible, how bad it would be, and how we should deal with it. Understanding the situation, despite how horrible, allows you to cope with it and move on. I still have nightmares, don’t get me wrong. Horrible, horrible nightmares. Nuclear explosions, burning flesh, hijacked planes, chemical caches – I dream about them almost every night.
And that brings me to today, seven years later. Nightmares, asymmetrical warfare planning, and all. And comic books! I can’t forget comic books, My childhood escapism turned into adult escapism. I have to admit, it burns me up to see images of the towers and the pentagon play at the RNC while the speakers take shots at the “elitist East.” To see folks from the corn and bible-belts chanting USA, ragging on us liberals that lived through September 11th, whose lives were drastically changed and still live with a touch of fear on a day-to-day basis, yet using the tragedy as a war cry.
It’s funny – in 2000 I was a McCain supporter. A registered Independent, social liberal, and fiscal conservative. Over the past seven years my love for this country (and the people in it) has grown significantly. I’ve traveled all over the US with my job, met all kinds of people from all types of backgrounds. We have a wonderfully diverse country with hundreds of millions of interesting stories. And yet we’re being torn apart by divisive politics and lies. I fall into it too, sometimes, more often than I should. It’s hard to keep a clear head when both sides grind you down. I do believe this country stands at a cross-road, however. There are too many problems facing us that we’ve been ignoring for far too long. I do believe we’re going to need someone who isn’t afraid to think completely outside the box, who can unify this country, and who can finally move us beyond a Tuesday in September seven years ago and look towards the future.
Hopefully on September 11th, 2009 I can come back to this blog and talk about our recovering economy, baby boomers retiring and having money to live on, new jobs as a result of energy advancements, and promising new medications and treatments that result from our government getting out of the way of science. Hopefully I can talk about America taking a leadership roll in the world again and our improving position in the global economy. Hopefully we can begin to make amends as a country, find common ground, and stop sacrificing our future for tabloid-style politics.
Hopefully.
posted by Jason at
12:00 PM
Wedding DJs: Push or Pull Strategy?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Push/Pull Product Development and Marketing is one of my favorite subjects, believe it or not. It's a pretty simple concept: some products are generated and marketed as a result of customer demands and some products and generated and marketed that the customer doesn't even know they need yet. The former is a pull strategy and the latter requires a push strategy. I'm a big fan of the push strategy, not because I think I can develop something the public will soon realize they need but because I feel like the public will buy anything you tell them to.
Anyway, now that you're an expert in push/pull strategies I'd like you to ponder a question - are Wedding DJs the result of a push or a pull?
Robin and I are currently looking for a DJ for our wedding. My first choice was djBC but he no longer does weddings. Since I didn't really have a second choice, we decided to scour the World Wide Web for Boston-area wedding DJs. We discovered something pretty early in our research - a Wedding DJ is a guy that wears a vest and a bow tie, is bald or balding, uses tacky inflatable props, and has an extensive playlist that includes Kelly Clarkson, the Electric Slide, and "It's Raining Men." A Wedding DJ is essentially someone who, long ago, decided that they'd never make it in the club scene, on radio, or in the studio and, instead, they'll do the same tired routine day-in-and-day-out at weddings. It seems like a soulless profession, where a script is generated on Day One and forty years later it's being performed for a cool grand. It's not a bad life, don't get me wrong, but if it was my life I'd have killed myself years ago.
But we're not here to shit on the Wedding DJ - we're here to talk about push-pull strategies. So, honestly, looking at the Wedding DJ - is it push or pull? Does the Wedding DJ exist because the customer demands him or does he exist because he feels the customer needs him? I honestly don't know where I stand on this issue - I can't live in a world where a Wedding DJ is needed nor can I live in one where people are convinced they need a Wedding DJ. I'm thinking there's a new paradigm in play here, and that's Lack of Information Strategy. If every advertised Wedding DJ acts, looks, and performs like every other advertised Wedding DJ, how would the customer even know what options are available?
Well, I know what I want in a DJ for my wedding. I want a guy or girl that's young and doesn't own a bow tie. I want someone that's working his or her ass off to break into the club or mix tape or record production scene and doing weddings on the side to pay the bills. I want someone who would REFUSE to play that "Slide to the left now crisscross song" as a matter of artistic integrity. I want someone with Sam Cooke in their library but not just "You Send Me", I want "That's Where It's At" to close the night and some Soul Stirrers "Jesus Gave Me Water" mixed into the cocktail hour. Where is THAT guy (or girl)? Who's marketing that person? There's a pull right here and, I imagine, as my generation marries off that pull will grow - who's meeting us halfway?
I know these people are out there someone and I know they don't even own the Chicken Dance or "I Will Survive."
Anyway, now that you're an expert in push/pull strategies I'd like you to ponder a question - are Wedding DJs the result of a push or a pull?
Robin and I are currently looking for a DJ for our wedding. My first choice was djBC but he no longer does weddings. Since I didn't really have a second choice, we decided to scour the World Wide Web for Boston-area wedding DJs. We discovered something pretty early in our research - a Wedding DJ is a guy that wears a vest and a bow tie, is bald or balding, uses tacky inflatable props, and has an extensive playlist that includes Kelly Clarkson, the Electric Slide, and "It's Raining Men." A Wedding DJ is essentially someone who, long ago, decided that they'd never make it in the club scene, on radio, or in the studio and, instead, they'll do the same tired routine day-in-and-day-out at weddings. It seems like a soulless profession, where a script is generated on Day One and forty years later it's being performed for a cool grand. It's not a bad life, don't get me wrong, but if it was my life I'd have killed myself years ago.
But we're not here to shit on the Wedding DJ - we're here to talk about push-pull strategies. So, honestly, looking at the Wedding DJ - is it push or pull? Does the Wedding DJ exist because the customer demands him or does he exist because he feels the customer needs him? I honestly don't know where I stand on this issue - I can't live in a world where a Wedding DJ is needed nor can I live in one where people are convinced they need a Wedding DJ. I'm thinking there's a new paradigm in play here, and that's Lack of Information Strategy. If every advertised Wedding DJ acts, looks, and performs like every other advertised Wedding DJ, how would the customer even know what options are available?
Well, I know what I want in a DJ for my wedding. I want a guy or girl that's young and doesn't own a bow tie. I want someone that's working his or her ass off to break into the club or mix tape or record production scene and doing weddings on the side to pay the bills. I want someone who would REFUSE to play that "Slide to the left now crisscross song" as a matter of artistic integrity. I want someone with Sam Cooke in their library but not just "You Send Me", I want "That's Where It's At" to close the night and some Soul Stirrers "Jesus Gave Me Water" mixed into the cocktail hour. Where is THAT guy (or girl)? Who's marketing that person? There's a pull right here and, I imagine, as my generation marries off that pull will grow - who's meeting us halfway?
I know these people are out there someone and I know they don't even own the Chicken Dance or "I Will Survive."
posted by Jason at
9:00 AM
Election 2008: The Movie
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Let’s face it – the eventual movie based on the 2008 election has Oscar bait written all-over it. I decided to do Hollywood a favor and cast the main players using my favorite tool: The MyHeritage.com Celebrity Matches function. Let’s just get right to it.
We’ll start with everyone’s favorite veep, Sarah Palin:
I think MyHeritage hit the nail on the head with Raquel Welch but Beyonce is guarenteed to bring in that big money. I say we get something right when it comes to VP-selection and give Palin the "bootylicious" makeover so American audiences can "come over and check up on it." Now let's look at McCain:
Jack Nicholson is an inspired choice and he has my vote, mainly because we know how well Jack can do "bat-shit fucking insane." I do have to wonder if they chose Vin Diesel as an option because he looks like McCain or because he's the one celebrity tough enough to undergo five and a half years of torture? Anyway, it's Biden time!
John Denver. Next!
Listen, I'm not the one that put five white guys up there, MyHeritage.com is to blame for that. Anyway, since Heath and Welles are dead I'm going to have to go with Colin Farrell. But what about the supporting cast? What would this movie be without Hillary Clinton?
Apparently Hillary has a face for radio or 1950s TV/movies. I'm going with Meatloaf on this one, I think he can pull it off. Our current Emperor, George W. Bush!
Yitzhak Rabin won't be available so I say we just cast Bush as himself - it's not like he'll be doing much anyways. And how about our favorite elitist media personality Keith Olbermann?
I wonder if Tesla would be willing to come out of his resurrection chamber (which he no doubt invented) and comb that part out of his hair? Maybe we can get Bowie to play Tesla playing Olbermann? Papa Bear!
If Yitzhak Rabin was available for Bush I'd cast Shimon Peres or Ariel Sharon for O'Reilly, just to show my support for Israel. Since that's not an option, I'll go with Leonard Cohen in the hopes of getting him to record the soundtrack. Finally, for the hunting scenes, we'll need someone to play the polar bear Sarah Palin will slaughter in the first act.
David Hasselhoff it is, and I hope they use live bullets.
We’ll start with everyone’s favorite veep, Sarah Palin:
I think MyHeritage hit the nail on the head with Raquel Welch but Beyonce is guarenteed to bring in that big money. I say we get something right when it comes to VP-selection and give Palin the "bootylicious" makeover so American audiences can "come over and check up on it." Now let's look at McCain:
Jack Nicholson is an inspired choice and he has my vote, mainly because we know how well Jack can do "bat-shit fucking insane." I do have to wonder if they chose Vin Diesel as an option because he looks like McCain or because he's the one celebrity tough enough to undergo five and a half years of torture? Anyway, it's Biden time!
John Denver. Next!
Listen, I'm not the one that put five white guys up there, MyHeritage.com is to blame for that. Anyway, since Heath and Welles are dead I'm going to have to go with Colin Farrell. But what about the supporting cast? What would this movie be without Hillary Clinton?
Apparently Hillary has a face for radio or 1950s TV/movies. I'm going with Meatloaf on this one, I think he can pull it off. Our current Emperor, George W. Bush!
Yitzhak Rabin won't be available so I say we just cast Bush as himself - it's not like he'll be doing much anyways. And how about our favorite elitist media personality Keith Olbermann?
I wonder if Tesla would be willing to come out of his resurrection chamber (which he no doubt invented) and comb that part out of his hair? Maybe we can get Bowie to play Tesla playing Olbermann? Papa Bear!
If Yitzhak Rabin was available for Bush I'd cast Shimon Peres or Ariel Sharon for O'Reilly, just to show my support for Israel. Since that's not an option, I'll go with Leonard Cohen in the hopes of getting him to record the soundtrack. Finally, for the hunting scenes, we'll need someone to play the polar bear Sarah Palin will slaughter in the first act.
David Hasselhoff it is, and I hope they use live bullets.
posted by Jason at
7:00 AM
Calling It: Obama
Monday, September 08, 2008
We have pools for football, the Oscars, and celebrity deaths: why not make a pool where people predict the direction of our country for the next four years? I'm kicking this one off, making my state-by-state predictions for the 2008 elections. First a bit on my philosophy...
I think Palin managed to energize the evangelicals and the conservative base. In other words: she brings in the Bush vote. I also think that Palin will manage to polarize moderates, push away a large chunk of the Jewish vote, and do nothing to counter the youth and black vote that Obama is energizing. My honest assessment is the more-of-the-same team of McCain/Palin is going to bring in the more-of-the-same votes of Bush/Cheney. I think Obama is going to be able to keep the youth and black vote in high spirits and bring them to the polls in record numbers. With that in mind, I'm swinging a handful of the Clinton states back to Obama but giving Pennsylvania and Ohio to McCain, the only two battleground states I see him winning, primarily by letting the race card play itself. So, my map:
For McCain:
For Obama:
So I have Obama winning 324 electoral votes to 214. Am I being biased? Am I completely off with certain states? If you think so feel free to challenge me. Here's a blank map:
Make your own predictions, send me a link, and I'll link to you from this post.
I think Palin managed to energize the evangelicals and the conservative base. In other words: she brings in the Bush vote. I also think that Palin will manage to polarize moderates, push away a large chunk of the Jewish vote, and do nothing to counter the youth and black vote that Obama is energizing. My honest assessment is the more-of-the-same team of McCain/Palin is going to bring in the more-of-the-same votes of Bush/Cheney. I think Obama is going to be able to keep the youth and black vote in high spirits and bring them to the polls in record numbers. With that in mind, I'm swinging a handful of the Clinton states back to Obama but giving Pennsylvania and Ohio to McCain, the only two battleground states I see him winning, primarily by letting the race card play itself. So, my map:
For McCain:
For Obama:
So I have Obama winning 324 electoral votes to 214. Am I being biased? Am I completely off with certain states? If you think so feel free to challenge me. Here's a blank map:
Make your own predictions, send me a link, and I'll link to you from this post.
posted by Jason at
9:59 AM
Smearing Sarah
Friday, September 05, 2008
Just a couple of front-page news-worthy screen grabs from FoxNews.com:
I posted a comment to ask them if they were going to follow-up with an article that says Obama is not Muslim, didn't attend a madrassa, etc. I doubt the comment will get posted, though. Anyway, it's good to know that FoxNews will always follow the GOP's instructions.
I posted a comment to ask them if they were going to follow-up with an article that says Obama is not Muslim, didn't attend a madrassa, etc. I doubt the comment will get posted, though. Anyway, it's good to know that FoxNews will always follow the GOP's instructions.
posted by Jason at
2:15 PM
The GOP and The Evangelicals
I’ve been thinking about evangelicals today. I find it odd how an entire community can be moved to vote for two issues: constitutional amendments that ban abortion and gay marriage. Reagan was the first person to rally this voter base, get them to the polls, and have them cast their votes for conservative Republicans that want to overturn Roe v. Wade. George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush managed to follow in Reagan’s footsteps and put a strong-hold on the Midwest and South that only Bill Clinton was able to break and, admittedly, Perot was a big factor, pulling fiscal-minded Republicans to him in several key states.
Regardless, we’re talking 20-out-of-28 years of Republicans in the White House thanks largely to the evangelical vote. Being that people can be easily motivated to fight against something and it’s harder to get them to fight to preserve something, I ask myself why the Republicans would ever overturn Roe v. Wade. Why would they stack the deck and give the Evangelicals what they want if the Evangelicals keep voting for them to give them what they want? Let’s look at our current Supreme Court justices:
John Paul Stevens appointed by Gerald Ford
Antonin Gregory Scalia appointed by Reagan
Anthonu McLeod Kennedy appointed by Reagan
David Hackett Souter appointed by G.H.W. Bush
Clarence Thoma appointed by G.H.W. Bush
Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed by Bill Clinton
Stephen Gerald Breyer appointed by Bill Clinton
John Glover Roberts, Jr. appointed by G.W. Bush
Samual Anthony Alito appointed by G.W. Bush
We currently have six Justices that were appointed by vocal opponents of abortion. Gerald Ford appointed one sitting Justice but he didn’t really have an agenda to overturn Roe v. Wade, he thought it was a state issue. The Great Baby-Killer William Jefferson Clinton only appointed two Supreme Court Justices. I have to think that if the Republicans were really motivated to overturn Roe v. Wade we’d have six people sitting on the bench willing to hear the appropriate cases and get the job done. But it hasn’t happened yet, and the Republicans are still saying that they need to win this election in order to appoint the Justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Huh?
It’s just another example of an entire community being strung along and lied to so that they can be manipulated to vote a certain way. The Democrats do it too, don’t get me wrong, but we really don’t have any ace up our sleeve like the abortion issue. What a cash cow Reagan stumbled upon when he put that one into the national arena.
Maybe my assessment is incorrect and, if so, I’d love to hear from folks that have some of the information that I’m lacking. Is Roe v. Wade really being threatened this year?
Fun Fact Of The Day: As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed a bill legalizing abortion in 1967. He claims to have had a crisis of faith after signing the bill, but doesn’t it make more sense that he found a way to keep the GOP in power? Looking at the Supreme Court appointments over the past 28 years, I’d say the latter is true.
Regardless, we’re talking 20-out-of-28 years of Republicans in the White House thanks largely to the evangelical vote. Being that people can be easily motivated to fight against something and it’s harder to get them to fight to preserve something, I ask myself why the Republicans would ever overturn Roe v. Wade. Why would they stack the deck and give the Evangelicals what they want if the Evangelicals keep voting for them to give them what they want? Let’s look at our current Supreme Court justices:
John Paul Stevens appointed by Gerald Ford
Antonin Gregory Scalia appointed by Reagan
Anthonu McLeod Kennedy appointed by Reagan
David Hackett Souter appointed by G.H.W. Bush
Clarence Thoma appointed by G.H.W. Bush
Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed by Bill Clinton
Stephen Gerald Breyer appointed by Bill Clinton
John Glover Roberts, Jr. appointed by G.W. Bush
Samual Anthony Alito appointed by G.W. Bush
We currently have six Justices that were appointed by vocal opponents of abortion. Gerald Ford appointed one sitting Justice but he didn’t really have an agenda to overturn Roe v. Wade, he thought it was a state issue. The Great Baby-Killer William Jefferson Clinton only appointed two Supreme Court Justices. I have to think that if the Republicans were really motivated to overturn Roe v. Wade we’d have six people sitting on the bench willing to hear the appropriate cases and get the job done. But it hasn’t happened yet, and the Republicans are still saying that they need to win this election in order to appoint the Justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Huh?
It’s just another example of an entire community being strung along and lied to so that they can be manipulated to vote a certain way. The Democrats do it too, don’t get me wrong, but we really don’t have any ace up our sleeve like the abortion issue. What a cash cow Reagan stumbled upon when he put that one into the national arena.
Maybe my assessment is incorrect and, if so, I’d love to hear from folks that have some of the information that I’m lacking. Is Roe v. Wade really being threatened this year?
Fun Fact Of The Day: As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed a bill legalizing abortion in 1967. He claims to have had a crisis of faith after signing the bill, but doesn’t it make more sense that he found a way to keep the GOP in power? Looking at the Supreme Court appointments over the past 28 years, I’d say the latter is true.
posted by Jason at
9:26 AM
RNC-Approved Pick-Up Lines
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Tonight’s the final night of the RNC, “Party Night” as some folks like to call it. This is the night when the champagne is consumed, the women show off their cleavage, and the men put on their granny panties. One night every four years America’s elite retire to their hotel rooms with their future knocked-up brides for a night of breeding and kink. I’m posting a couple of quick RNC-approved pick-up lines so that no-one’s left out in the cold (or, even worse, trolling for sex in the men’s room).
“Why would we waste time prospecting for oil when I can oil up and then go prospecting instead?”
“I want to film a movie so nasty that the liberal media won’t even be able to comment on it.”
(While tapping your foot against a member of the opposite sex’s foot) “It’s like that, except we can get married afterward.”
“Thank God your mother adhered to pro-life values.”
“It’s an IED with a biological component and I’m using it to declare a fatwah on your pussy.”
“All this talk of torture has gotten me all worked up!”
“Let’s pretend you're Alaska and lay some pipe.”
“Hey, can you do me a favor? I need to prove to my minister that I cured the gay…”
“You’re a virgin? Don’t sweat it; with my brains and your lack of experience we can make a Republican Obama.”
“Not even Michael Moore would try and control this gun, baby.”
“I don’t normally do this but Palin has me feeling empowered...would you put your baby in me?”
“You may think the bulge in my pants is evolving but it’s actually being subconsciously designed.”
“I just deforested down there.”
“Honey, I swallow it all. There’s no child left behind.”
“I have oxycotton, a bald eagle, and some Anne Coulter slash fiction back in my room.”
Feel free to take what you want or come up with your own! And have fun, you crazy kids!
“Why would we waste time prospecting for oil when I can oil up and then go prospecting instead?”
“I want to film a movie so nasty that the liberal media won’t even be able to comment on it.”
(While tapping your foot against a member of the opposite sex’s foot) “It’s like that, except we can get married afterward.”
“Thank God your mother adhered to pro-life values.”
“It’s an IED with a biological component and I’m using it to declare a fatwah on your pussy.”
“All this talk of torture has gotten me all worked up!”
“Let’s pretend you're Alaska and lay some pipe.”
“Hey, can you do me a favor? I need to prove to my minister that I cured the gay…”
“You’re a virgin? Don’t sweat it; with my brains and your lack of experience we can make a Republican Obama.”
“Not even Michael Moore would try and control this gun, baby.”
“I don’t normally do this but Palin has me feeling empowered...would you put your baby in me?”
“You may think the bulge in my pants is evolving but it’s actually being subconsciously designed.”
“I just deforested down there.”
“Honey, I swallow it all. There’s no child left behind.”
“I have oxycotton, a bald eagle, and some Anne Coulter slash fiction back in my room.”
Feel free to take what you want or come up with your own! And have fun, you crazy kids!
posted by Jason at
2:32 PM
Live Blogging the RNC
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
9:06 - It's Mitt! I like the cut of his jib.
9:07 - Constitutional rights and unions: liberal. Terrorists: liberal. You tell 'em, Mitt.
9:10 - I feel like I'm watching an infomercial for a juicer. A Freedom Juicer.
9:10 - Homes that are free from pornography; that's the Republican promise. Keep that shit in public restrooms.
9:11 - Seriously, Massachusetts, how'd you elect this guy?
9:11 - Hah, Mitt just called the Democrats "The party of Big Brother."
9:12 - Romney's shitting on the unions. Seriously, Massachusetts, blue collar state - what the fuck?
9:14 - Al Gore's private jet? OH NO HE DIDN'T!
9:14 - John McCain's gonna defeat Islam. Crowd chants "USA." That'll play well internationally.
9:15 - "People prefer straight talk to politically correct talk." Mitt then went on to call Obama an "uppity nigger".
9:17 - Mitt should have ended with, "Thank you, and God Bless America, and Jesus walked with the Indians!" I wonder if they would have cheered as much. Oh - and it's time for The Huck!
9:25 - Media's going to kill this McCain/Palin ticket. They're hungry for blood. Mitt's flipping the experience question back to Obama, seems to be the playbook.
9:26 - HUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK! If all evangelicals where this funny I'd probably sign up to hate Muslims and fags too.
9:27 - Reporting has been "tackier than a costume change a Madonna concert."
9:29 - It's hard to hate Huck because every sentence has a Disney opening followed by ignorant bullshit. I just love to hear him. He's great. He's like an illinformed George Carlin.
9:32 - Bootstrap talk! "It isn't supposed to hurt when you take a shower." Use lube. Or soap. You're in the shower.
9:33 - "I'm a republican because I didn't spend my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me." That will play well with the poor.
9:34 - "Sarah Palin got more votes running for Mayor in Wasilla than Biden got running for president." I can't wait to hear Biden's response to THAT one.
9:35 - Fucking torture porn. Always with the torture porn. It's like watching the bastard child of Saw IV and Hostel II.
9:36 - "He can't even lift his arms to his shoulder." Why Huck gotta dis on the disabled for?
9:37 - Black people!
9:38 - That story made no fucking sense. I think Huck was saying that our soldiers are dumber than elementary school students. Didn't Kerry get in trouble for that?
9:54 - Levi and Bristol in the house! Neither of them look like they want to be there. I love Levi's American flag pin.
9:56 - Sarah Palin's sister, Heather, is endorsing her sister. That's like my mom telling me how much she loves my comics.
9:59 - CNN: Heather, what do you think about the controversies surrounded your sister? Heather: Private, uhhh...convictions. Private. Really private. Morals.
10:01 - Oh, it's that guy that won Florida! The 9/11 guy!
10:02 - Let's count how often he says 9/11!
10:03 - Ignore the media! Ignore the celebrities! It's like George H.W. Bush times a million.
10:04 - Rudy sounds like Sylvester the Cat.
10:04 - Why isn't he mentioning 9/11? Is he broken?
10:05 - Wait! McCain was TORTURED? And he REFUSED TO GIVE UP INFORMATION? I didn't know that.
10:06 - 9/11, Rudy. 9/11!!!!!!
10:07 - BOOOOOOOO CHICAGOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
10:08 - I feel a 9/11 coming on. Come on! Come on! "Not good enough to be present. I wasn't present on 9/11!"
10:09 - "He never had to lead people in crisis!" Say it! Say it! Say 9/11 you four-eyed, divorcing, nazi fuck!
10:12 - John McCain's up at every 3AM because of his prostate, I'm sure.
10:13 - Dude, Huck did not like that anti-hope talk. What a money shot, CNN.
10:14 - "Drill, baby, drill!" I don't think the Republicans understand how to bring independents in anymore.
10:15 - Democrats are going to hurt jobs and send jobs elsewhere? DEMOCRATS? Lolwtfbbq?
10:17 - SEPTEMBER 11TTTHHHHHHHHHH! What took you so long, Rudy?
10:19 - Obama's a terrorist. "If I were Joe Biden I'd want to get that VP thing in writing." Oh snap! Sarah Palin should get it in writing, too.
10:20 - Oh, no. Obama saw a shade of gray! How dare he be open-minded!
10:22 - I can't stop staring at the void were Rudy's lips are supposed to be.
10:22 - Obama "looked back" with Biden, McCain "looked forward" with Palin. And Palin has more "executive" experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined.
10:24 - Nice shot of NYC behind Rudy while he's making fun of Obama for not thinking Wasilla, Alaska is "flashy enough."
10:25 - I'm going to get sick of hearing the term "elective experience."
10:25 - You don't get 80% in NYC because everyone in NYC hated you, Rudy.
10:26 - Did Rudy just "Whew?" Rudy standing up for woman's rights. The womanizing Mayor, himself, telling you how it is.
10:28 - Only one mention of 9/11. I'm depressed.
10:29 - What time is it? Palin time! Levi looks confused.
10:30 - No mention of moose tonight, I hope Sarah brings it.
10:31 - It would be awesome if she said, "Sorry, Charlie. No can do."
10:32 - We counted out McCain because he had no money, was down in the polls, and was fucking nuts.
10:33 - The pollsters don't really look at anything. They just call people.
10:34 - "True profile in courage." Was he tortured?
10:34 - This is already sounding like a HS valedictorian speech.
10:35 - Six minutes in and you've said NOTHING.
10:36 - Wait! What? You have a FAMILY? No shit. Veep! Veep! Veep!
10:38 - An advocate for family's of special needs children as long as treatment doesn't involve stem cells.
10:38 - This is the shittiest convention speech I've ever heard. It sounds like a drunken aunt at a family reunion.
10:40 - Sarah Palin is qualified to be in a family.
10:42 - Wait, are we getting to experience now? Tell me, Sarah, what it means to be mayor of a small town.
10:43 - Someone's getting kicked out - and check out those empty bleachers.
10:43 - Bitter McBitter! Hopey O'Hopely!
10:45 - It's the meeeeddddiiaaaaaa!
10:45 - It's not opinion, Sarah, when there's evidence to back it up. Lots of evidence.
10:47 - She still has not said a thing. Not a goddamn thing.
10:47 - And what the fuck is up with Mount Rushmore behind her?
10:49 - The media has to keep on this girl. Seriously. She's misrepresenting a lot of her positions and achievements here.
10:51 - Uh. I'm done. Whatever.
10:53 - I've seen multiple "hot chick" buttons. Feminism!
10:54 - Also, I think Sarah Palin believes in family and oil and that's about it.
10:58 - Increase the tax burden on the people in this audience. Not the people at home, watching, but let's pretend, ok?
10:59 - Man, McCain's not gonna dump her, is he?
11:02 - I hate the term "do nothing senate." We had two years and GWB vetoed like a maniac.
11:04 - Wait! What? John McCain was a SOLDIER?
11:05 - Palin qualified to be in a family. McCain is qualified to be tortured. That's what I learned today.
11:08 - Look. I know I don't like Palin. You know I don't like Palin. That was a bad speech. An empty speech where the teleprompter words were seen in her glasses the whole time. It was part "I have a family" and part "blood in the water" speech. There was no meat (except for the oil love affair), nothing that should be in a VP speech. Oh well - good chance she'll be president soon. God Bless Pandering.
9:07 - Constitutional rights and unions: liberal. Terrorists: liberal. You tell 'em, Mitt.
9:10 - I feel like I'm watching an infomercial for a juicer. A Freedom Juicer.
9:10 - Homes that are free from pornography; that's the Republican promise. Keep that shit in public restrooms.
9:11 - Seriously, Massachusetts, how'd you elect this guy?
9:11 - Hah, Mitt just called the Democrats "The party of Big Brother."
9:12 - Romney's shitting on the unions. Seriously, Massachusetts, blue collar state - what the fuck?
9:14 - Al Gore's private jet? OH NO HE DIDN'T!
9:14 - John McCain's gonna defeat Islam. Crowd chants "USA." That'll play well internationally.
9:15 - "People prefer straight talk to politically correct talk." Mitt then went on to call Obama an "uppity nigger".
9:17 - Mitt should have ended with, "Thank you, and God Bless America, and Jesus walked with the Indians!" I wonder if they would have cheered as much. Oh - and it's time for The Huck!
9:25 - Media's going to kill this McCain/Palin ticket. They're hungry for blood. Mitt's flipping the experience question back to Obama, seems to be the playbook.
9:26 - HUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK! If all evangelicals where this funny I'd probably sign up to hate Muslims and fags too.
9:27 - Reporting has been "tackier than a costume change a Madonna concert."
9:29 - It's hard to hate Huck because every sentence has a Disney opening followed by ignorant bullshit. I just love to hear him. He's great. He's like an illinformed George Carlin.
9:32 - Bootstrap talk! "It isn't supposed to hurt when you take a shower." Use lube. Or soap. You're in the shower.
9:33 - "I'm a republican because I didn't spend my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me." That will play well with the poor.
9:34 - "Sarah Palin got more votes running for Mayor in Wasilla than Biden got running for president." I can't wait to hear Biden's response to THAT one.
9:35 - Fucking torture porn. Always with the torture porn. It's like watching the bastard child of Saw IV and Hostel II.
9:36 - "He can't even lift his arms to his shoulder." Why Huck gotta dis on the disabled for?
9:37 - Black people!
9:38 - That story made no fucking sense. I think Huck was saying that our soldiers are dumber than elementary school students. Didn't Kerry get in trouble for that?
9:54 - Levi and Bristol in the house! Neither of them look like they want to be there. I love Levi's American flag pin.
9:56 - Sarah Palin's sister, Heather, is endorsing her sister. That's like my mom telling me how much she loves my comics.
9:59 - CNN: Heather, what do you think about the controversies surrounded your sister? Heather: Private, uhhh...convictions. Private. Really private. Morals.
10:01 - Oh, it's that guy that won Florida! The 9/11 guy!
10:02 - Let's count how often he says 9/11!
10:03 - Ignore the media! Ignore the celebrities! It's like George H.W. Bush times a million.
10:04 - Rudy sounds like Sylvester the Cat.
10:04 - Why isn't he mentioning 9/11? Is he broken?
10:05 - Wait! McCain was TORTURED? And he REFUSED TO GIVE UP INFORMATION? I didn't know that.
10:06 - 9/11, Rudy. 9/11!!!!!!
10:07 - BOOOOOOOO CHICAGOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
10:08 - I feel a 9/11 coming on. Come on! Come on! "Not good enough to be present. I wasn't present on 9/11!"
10:09 - "He never had to lead people in crisis!" Say it! Say it! Say 9/11 you four-eyed, divorcing, nazi fuck!
10:12 - John McCain's up at every 3AM because of his prostate, I'm sure.
10:13 - Dude, Huck did not like that anti-hope talk. What a money shot, CNN.
10:14 - "Drill, baby, drill!" I don't think the Republicans understand how to bring independents in anymore.
10:15 - Democrats are going to hurt jobs and send jobs elsewhere? DEMOCRATS? Lolwtfbbq?
10:17 - SEPTEMBER 11TTTHHHHHHHHHH! What took you so long, Rudy?
10:19 - Obama's a terrorist. "If I were Joe Biden I'd want to get that VP thing in writing." Oh snap! Sarah Palin should get it in writing, too.
10:20 - Oh, no. Obama saw a shade of gray! How dare he be open-minded!
10:22 - I can't stop staring at the void were Rudy's lips are supposed to be.
10:22 - Obama "looked back" with Biden, McCain "looked forward" with Palin. And Palin has more "executive" experience than the entire Democratic ticket combined.
10:24 - Nice shot of NYC behind Rudy while he's making fun of Obama for not thinking Wasilla, Alaska is "flashy enough."
10:25 - I'm going to get sick of hearing the term "elective experience."
10:25 - You don't get 80% in NYC because everyone in NYC hated you, Rudy.
10:26 - Did Rudy just "Whew?" Rudy standing up for woman's rights. The womanizing Mayor, himself, telling you how it is.
10:28 - Only one mention of 9/11. I'm depressed.
10:29 - What time is it? Palin time! Levi looks confused.
10:30 - No mention of moose tonight, I hope Sarah brings it.
10:31 - It would be awesome if she said, "Sorry, Charlie. No can do."
10:32 - We counted out McCain because he had no money, was down in the polls, and was fucking nuts.
10:33 - The pollsters don't really look at anything. They just call people.
10:34 - "True profile in courage." Was he tortured?
10:34 - This is already sounding like a HS valedictorian speech.
10:35 - Six minutes in and you've said NOTHING.
10:36 - Wait! What? You have a FAMILY? No shit. Veep! Veep! Veep!
10:38 - An advocate for family's of special needs children as long as treatment doesn't involve stem cells.
10:38 - This is the shittiest convention speech I've ever heard. It sounds like a drunken aunt at a family reunion.
10:40 - Sarah Palin is qualified to be in a family.
10:42 - Wait, are we getting to experience now? Tell me, Sarah, what it means to be mayor of a small town.
10:43 - Someone's getting kicked out - and check out those empty bleachers.
10:43 - Bitter McBitter! Hopey O'Hopely!
10:45 - It's the meeeeddddiiaaaaaa!
10:45 - It's not opinion, Sarah, when there's evidence to back it up. Lots of evidence.
10:47 - She still has not said a thing. Not a goddamn thing.
10:47 - And what the fuck is up with Mount Rushmore behind her?
10:49 - The media has to keep on this girl. Seriously. She's misrepresenting a lot of her positions and achievements here.
10:51 - Uh. I'm done. Whatever.
10:53 - I've seen multiple "hot chick" buttons. Feminism!
10:54 - Also, I think Sarah Palin believes in family and oil and that's about it.
10:58 - Increase the tax burden on the people in this audience. Not the people at home, watching, but let's pretend, ok?
10:59 - Man, McCain's not gonna dump her, is he?
11:02 - I hate the term "do nothing senate." We had two years and GWB vetoed like a maniac.
11:04 - Wait! What? John McCain was a SOLDIER?
11:05 - Palin qualified to be in a family. McCain is qualified to be tortured. That's what I learned today.
11:08 - Look. I know I don't like Palin. You know I don't like Palin. That was a bad speech. An empty speech where the teleprompter words were seen in her glasses the whole time. It was part "I have a family" and part "blood in the water" speech. There was no meat (except for the oil love affair), nothing that should be in a VP speech. Oh well - good chance she'll be president soon. God Bless Pandering.
Labels: editorial, live_blogging, politics
posted by Jason at
7:44 PM
McCain's Opportunity
"To rectify past blunders is impossible, but we might profit by the experience of them."
- George Washington
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly."
- Ronald Reagan
"I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here -- and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one"
- George W. Bush
If McCain really wants to break away from the policies and practices of George W. Bush he should admit that he made a rushed decision in choosing Sarah Palin and that he will be naming a new running mate as soon as possible. If he wants to restore the people's faith in his maverick persona, in his ability to make tough decisions that go against the party line, and his ability to lead he needs to bite the bullet and show that he's a bigger man than most. We cannot risk having Sarah Palin assume the presidency before her time. We cannot risk having another president that would rather "stay the course" than admit to a mistake and right the wrong. McCain wants to be president, he needs to act presidential on this one.
- George Washington
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly."
- Ronald Reagan
"I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here -- and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one"
- George W. Bush
If McCain really wants to break away from the policies and practices of George W. Bush he should admit that he made a rushed decision in choosing Sarah Palin and that he will be naming a new running mate as soon as possible. If he wants to restore the people's faith in his maverick persona, in his ability to make tough decisions that go against the party line, and his ability to lead he needs to bite the bullet and show that he's a bigger man than most. We cannot risk having Sarah Palin assume the presidency before her time. We cannot risk having another president that would rather "stay the course" than admit to a mistake and right the wrong. McCain wants to be president, he needs to act presidential on this one.
posted by Jason at
10:54 AM
McCain's Oppurtunity
"To rectify past blunders is impossible, but we might profit by the experience of them."
- George Washington
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly."
- Ronald Reagan
"I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here -- and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one"
- George W. Bush
If McCain really wants to break away from the policies and practices of George W. Bush he should admit that he made a rushed decision in choosing Sarah Palin and that he will be naming a new running mate as soon as possible. If he wants to restore the people's faith in his maverick persona, in his ability to make tough decisions that go against the party line, and his ability to lead he needs to bite the bullet and show that he's a bigger man than most. We cannot risk having Sarah Palin assume the presidency before her time. We cannot risk having another president that would rather "stay the course" than admit to a mistake and right the wrong. McCain wants to be president, he needs to act presidential on this one.
- George Washington
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly."
- Ronald Reagan
"I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here -- and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one"
- George W. Bush
If McCain really wants to break away from the policies and practices of George W. Bush he should admit that he made a rushed decision in choosing Sarah Palin and that he will be naming a new running mate as soon as possible. If he wants to restore the people's faith in his maverick persona, in his ability to make tough decisions that go against the party line, and his ability to lead he needs to bite the bullet and show that he's a bigger man than most. We cannot risk having Sarah Palin assume the presidency before her time. We cannot risk having another president that would rather "stay the course" than admit to a mistake and right the wrong. McCain wants to be president, he needs to act presidential on this one.
posted by Jason at
10:32 AM
McCain/Palin: The Movie
posted by Jason at
9:31 AM
Live Blogging the RNC
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
9:46 - Laura's proud first female veep will be a Republican woman.
9:47 - Women, women, women...Republicans are all about women this year, huh?
9:48 - George has "enduring love" for USA. Hate for everyone else. And the other half of the USA.
9:49 - Laura's giving "straight talk" to pay homage to McCain of 2000. "Lip service" to pay homage to hubbie's policies, McCain of 2008.
9:51 - Laura's taking credit for Bono's work while stealing Obama's lines.
9:53 - GWB's duties have him in Washington for the first time in weeks because he wasn't there last time a major hurricane hit New Orleans.
9:55 - "I know what it takes to be president." Apparently includes looking over daily intelligence briefings. Although not stated, it entails ignoring them as well.
9:56 - You know he has "Pause for applause" on his prompter.
9:57 - "Angry left" - we're angry because of you, George. Some of us wanted McCain in 2000...
9:58 - Energy efficient and oil prospecting! He has it all!
9:58 - Bush says he knows about McCain's straight talking. McCain knows about Bush's back-talking.
10:00 - Dedicated three seconds to Palin. Nice endorsement, right there. Even Bush knows nothing about her.
10:00 - What the fuck? Mountains and suns? What the hell is he talking about? That's some cowboy shit, right there.
10:03 - "We leave the white house with great gratitude for your support," says the wife of the president with the lowest approval rating in history.
10:04 - I actually like Laura Bush, it's her husband I don't like.
10:05 - Reagan bio vid. I actually like Reagan, too, from a historical perspective - I just hate how Republicans are still milking form his teets.
10:08 - How'd Thompson get the pimp spot? And where's his hot-as-hell wife? She should be the VP nominee.
10:09 - Holy shit, Fred Thompson is pouring on the bleach. "Most prosperous nation?" Sarah Palin is a "breath of fresh air?"
10:11 - Washington pundits and political analysts apparently hate Palin because she's not on the talk show circuit - what the fuck?
10:12 - God, these guys are going to feel so stupid in a week from now. They really don't get the Palin situation, or really don't get that she's going to implode.
10:12 - How do you field dress a moose?
10:13 - Wait - John McCain fought in the Revolutionary War? I think I might have misheard. Or John's really fucking old.
10:14 - Holy shit - there's going to be a closing prayer?
10:16 - Apparently McCain was Maverick from Top Gun while in flight school in Pensacola.
10:17 - We'll be hearing about McCain's war experience every night. Honestly, I love these types of stories. I love hearing my family's war stories. This is what the DNC was missing, unfortunately. Makes for an entertaining evening - doesn't make for a good President, however, unless your name is George Washington. Or Teddy Roosevelt.
10:23 - "Strength, courage, humility, wisdom, courage, honor" and now with improved pandering! God, I want 2000 McCain back.
10:25 - "And now we're winning..." Crowd chanting "USA." It's like a Michael Bay version of a national convention.
10:27 - They keep showing the same hot young Republican. Who is she? Is she single? I'd convert for some of her abstinence love.
10:28 - Did Thompson just dis Obama for using a teleprompter while READING A TELEPROMPTER? We see the teleprompter, Fred! It's right there!
10:29 - "Most liberal, inexperienced nominee to ever run for president." That would be Lincoln, actually.
10:30 - Current congress is "least accomplished." I think "most vetoed" is the appropriate term.
10:30 - Liberalism is reform and change you fucking dolt.
10:34 - Fred Thompson needs to pick up a Wall Street Journal. All he has to do is read the headlines, really.
10:35 - "Continued prosperity..." Thompson just wants Law & Order to bring him back on.
10:40 - Hey, it's that guy that ran with Gore!
10:42 - I wonder if Lieberman's going to join in with Group Prayer Time.
10:42 - Lieberman's following up Thompson partisan speech with talk of crossing the aisle. And you're a fucking Independent, Joe, don't misrepresent yourself.
10:43 - Oh no, you're not fucking doing this. You are not actually pretending to be a Democrat, are you?
10:45 - Didn't you all hate this guy in 2000? You all hated McCain, too. What a difference 8 years makes.
10:47 - Lieberman: 9/11 was a "natural disaster." Lieberman associates Muslims with Tornadoes.
10:48 - Talk about Palin, Lieberman. I'd love to hear your thoughts on her.
10:49 - A Michael Moore joke? What year are we in?
10:50 - Lieberman on Obama: "Eloquence is no substitute for a record." Tits are, apparently.
10:51 - Lieberman just praised Clinton - every attendee's heads exploded.
10:51 - Oh! Palin time! "Across party lines" "She's a leader we can count on to help John shape up Washington" "I sincerely believe that the real ticket for change this year is the McCain/Palin ticket." That's all we get about Palin from Lieberman. He apparently doesn't know much about her, either.
10:53 - "Mavericks" are we still using that word? We should start using "Panthers," sounds tougher and more red-necky.
10:54 - "John McCain had the guts and the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we have made in Iraq." And he plans on repeating those mistakes for years to come.
10:56 - Lieberman wants to speak "directly to democrats and independents." I'm listening. I'm "thinking of voting for John McCain," apparently.
10:57 - Wow, weakest endorsement ever. "John McCain is no ordinary candidate."
10:58 - Hah, I can't believe I voted for this guy in 2000. Fuck, man, this is a crazy-ass election. Lieberman is IMPLORING democrats to vote McCain. I can't wait to hear the democrat response. "Come together to make...John McCain our next great president."
11:01 - Donna Brazile is dissing Joe Lieberman hardcore. "On the issues he believes with Barack Obama 95% of the time."
9:47 - Women, women, women...Republicans are all about women this year, huh?
9:48 - George has "enduring love" for USA. Hate for everyone else. And the other half of the USA.
9:49 - Laura's giving "straight talk" to pay homage to McCain of 2000. "Lip service" to pay homage to hubbie's policies, McCain of 2008.
9:51 - Laura's taking credit for Bono's work while stealing Obama's lines.
9:53 - GWB's duties have him in Washington for the first time in weeks because he wasn't there last time a major hurricane hit New Orleans.
9:55 - "I know what it takes to be president." Apparently includes looking over daily intelligence briefings. Although not stated, it entails ignoring them as well.
9:56 - You know he has "Pause for applause" on his prompter.
9:57 - "Angry left" - we're angry because of you, George. Some of us wanted McCain in 2000...
9:58 - Energy efficient and oil prospecting! He has it all!
9:58 - Bush says he knows about McCain's straight talking. McCain knows about Bush's back-talking.
10:00 - Dedicated three seconds to Palin. Nice endorsement, right there. Even Bush knows nothing about her.
10:00 - What the fuck? Mountains and suns? What the hell is he talking about? That's some cowboy shit, right there.
10:03 - "We leave the white house with great gratitude for your support," says the wife of the president with the lowest approval rating in history.
10:04 - I actually like Laura Bush, it's her husband I don't like.
10:05 - Reagan bio vid. I actually like Reagan, too, from a historical perspective - I just hate how Republicans are still milking form his teets.
10:08 - How'd Thompson get the pimp spot? And where's his hot-as-hell wife? She should be the VP nominee.
10:09 - Holy shit, Fred Thompson is pouring on the bleach. "Most prosperous nation?" Sarah Palin is a "breath of fresh air?"
10:11 - Washington pundits and political analysts apparently hate Palin because she's not on the talk show circuit - what the fuck?
10:12 - God, these guys are going to feel so stupid in a week from now. They really don't get the Palin situation, or really don't get that she's going to implode.
10:12 - How do you field dress a moose?
10:13 - Wait - John McCain fought in the Revolutionary War? I think I might have misheard. Or John's really fucking old.
10:14 - Holy shit - there's going to be a closing prayer?
10:16 - Apparently McCain was Maverick from Top Gun while in flight school in Pensacola.
10:17 - We'll be hearing about McCain's war experience every night. Honestly, I love these types of stories. I love hearing my family's war stories. This is what the DNC was missing, unfortunately. Makes for an entertaining evening - doesn't make for a good President, however, unless your name is George Washington. Or Teddy Roosevelt.
10:23 - "Strength, courage, humility, wisdom, courage, honor" and now with improved pandering! God, I want 2000 McCain back.
10:25 - "And now we're winning..." Crowd chanting "USA." It's like a Michael Bay version of a national convention.
10:27 - They keep showing the same hot young Republican. Who is she? Is she single? I'd convert for some of her abstinence love.
10:28 - Did Thompson just dis Obama for using a teleprompter while READING A TELEPROMPTER? We see the teleprompter, Fred! It's right there!
10:29 - "Most liberal, inexperienced nominee to ever run for president." That would be Lincoln, actually.
10:30 - Current congress is "least accomplished." I think "most vetoed" is the appropriate term.
10:30 - Liberalism is reform and change you fucking dolt.
10:34 - Fred Thompson needs to pick up a Wall Street Journal. All he has to do is read the headlines, really.
10:35 - "Continued prosperity..." Thompson just wants Law & Order to bring him back on.
10:40 - Hey, it's that guy that ran with Gore!
10:42 - I wonder if Lieberman's going to join in with Group Prayer Time.
10:42 - Lieberman's following up Thompson partisan speech with talk of crossing the aisle. And you're a fucking Independent, Joe, don't misrepresent yourself.
10:43 - Oh no, you're not fucking doing this. You are not actually pretending to be a Democrat, are you?
10:45 - Didn't you all hate this guy in 2000? You all hated McCain, too. What a difference 8 years makes.
10:47 - Lieberman: 9/11 was a "natural disaster." Lieberman associates Muslims with Tornadoes.
10:48 - Talk about Palin, Lieberman. I'd love to hear your thoughts on her.
10:49 - A Michael Moore joke? What year are we in?
10:50 - Lieberman on Obama: "Eloquence is no substitute for a record." Tits are, apparently.
10:51 - Lieberman just praised Clinton - every attendee's heads exploded.
10:51 - Oh! Palin time! "Across party lines" "She's a leader we can count on to help John shape up Washington" "I sincerely believe that the real ticket for change this year is the McCain/Palin ticket." That's all we get about Palin from Lieberman. He apparently doesn't know much about her, either.
10:53 - "Mavericks" are we still using that word? We should start using "Panthers," sounds tougher and more red-necky.
10:54 - "John McCain had the guts and the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we have made in Iraq." And he plans on repeating those mistakes for years to come.
10:56 - Lieberman wants to speak "directly to democrats and independents." I'm listening. I'm "thinking of voting for John McCain," apparently.
10:57 - Wow, weakest endorsement ever. "John McCain is no ordinary candidate."
10:58 - Hah, I can't believe I voted for this guy in 2000. Fuck, man, this is a crazy-ass election. Lieberman is IMPLORING democrats to vote McCain. I can't wait to hear the democrat response. "Come together to make...John McCain our next great president."
11:01 - Donna Brazile is dissing Joe Lieberman hardcore. "On the issues he believes with Barack Obama 95% of the time."
Labels: editorial, live_blogging, politics
posted by Jason at
8:46 PM
Tuesday Throwback: Revisiting Conservapedia
I haven’t visited Conservapedia in a while so I decided to stop by today and see what they were saying about our current presidential candidates. I started with Obama, of course, and was actually surprised by the level of bias there. I mean, conservative-centric or not, this is supposed to be an encyclopedia, right? But the opening paragraph alone makes Fox News look like the Huffington Post:
Barack Obama, our first Affirmative Action President…that claim is unreferenced, of course. It goes on and on and on and on…I won’t even pull out the choice quotes, just read it. And then read Biden’s page, which starts off with:
Before we get to the laughable Sarah Palin bio, let’s at least touch upon McCain’s public blowjob. From the intro:
The rest of the article goes on to talk about how awesome McCain is. If Conservapedia was around in 2000, I wonder if they’d include a little bit about McCain’s alleged illegitimate child that the conservative powerbase used to get McCain off of the Republican ticket. Oh well, we can only imagine.
But the reason we’re all here, Sarah Palin. According to Conservapedia, Sarah Palin is the most righteous choice for Vice President in the history of the universe. There’s only one piece I want to quote, mainly because the emphasis isn’t mine:
Charles Barkley has some great “oh snap” soundbites, too, and he played for Phoenix – McCain should pick him for the VP spot once Palin backs out in order to “spend time with her family.”
Anyway, no mention of AIP, a complete white wash of the trooper scandal, no mention of her million-dollar earmarking as mayor – Sarah Palin is as white as a non-Affirmative Action President. I didn’t expect much from Conservapedia but when your mission statement is:
I’d expect at least some attempt at keeping out a conservative bias. Glass houses and all. Oh well, it’s just another examples of Republicans claiming that SOP news reporting displays a liberal bias whereas white washing it is being “fair and balanced.”
I really hate both sides. I’m going to start a new political party – details coming later this week.
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (allegedly born in Honolulu,[1][2] August 4, 1961) is the 2008 nominee of the Democratic Party for president.[3] Obama has served as a freshman Democratic Senator from Illinois for three and a half years. On August 23 he chose Joe Biden as his running mate. In 2007, Obama was the most liberal Senator.[4] If elected, Obama would be the first Affirmative Action President.
Barack Obama, our first Affirmative Action President…that claim is unreferenced, of course. It goes on and on and on and on…I won’t even pull out the choice quotes, just read it. And then read Biden’s page, which starts off with:
A member of the Democratic Party, Biden currently serves as the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and is the senior U.S. Senator from Delaware (since 1972). Biden is a self-described northeast liberal and an admitted plagiarist.[1] He is also known as a long-winded orator. [2]. In 2007, the non-partisan National Journal ranked Joe Biden as the third most liberal U.S. Senator.
Before we get to the laughable Sarah Palin bio, let’s at least touch upon McCain’s public blowjob. From the intro:
John Sidney McCain III (born in the U.S. Panama Canal Zone, August 29, 1936) [1], prominent conservative statesman and Vietnam War hero, is the senior Senator of Arizona. He has been an influential fixture in American politics since 1986, when he began his political career in hard-fought campaigns against pork barrel spending and campaign finance reform. As a pilot for the United States Navy and former Prisoner-of-War (POW), he served in the military for 22 years, meriting several accolades from the Armed forces.[2] McCain, a Baptist,[3] has impressive credentials on issues of foreign policy and national security, which have propelled him in the forefront of national politics as both an outspoken voice for the United States military and as a Presidential contender for the Republican Party since 1993.[4] McCain is currently the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 Election. [5][6]
The rest of the article goes on to talk about how awesome McCain is. If Conservapedia was around in 2000, I wonder if they’d include a little bit about McCain’s alleged illegitimate child that the conservative powerbase used to get McCain off of the Republican ticket. Oh well, we can only imagine.
But the reason we’re all here, Sarah Palin. According to Conservapedia, Sarah Palin is the most righteous choice for Vice President in the history of the universe. There’s only one piece I want to quote, mainly because the emphasis isn’t mine:
Another question asked, "Are you offended by the phrase 'Under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?" Palin replied, "Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance."
Charles Barkley has some great “oh snap” soundbites, too, and he played for Phoenix – McCain should pick him for the VP spot once Palin backs out in order to “spend time with her family.”
Anyway, no mention of AIP, a complete white wash of the trooper scandal, no mention of her million-dollar earmarking as mayor – Sarah Palin is as white as a non-Affirmative Action President. I didn’t expect much from Conservapedia but when your mission statement is:
Conservapedia is a clean and concise resource for those seeking the truth. We do not allow liberal bias to deceive and distort here. Founded initially in November 2006 as a way to educate advanced, college-bound homeschoolers, this resource has grown into a marvelous source of information for students, adults and teachers alike. We have received over 50 million page views!
The starting point for increasing your knowledge, your faith and the well-being of you and those around you is to understand concepts better. Conservapedia enables you to do that, and to impart what you have learned to others by editing here. The truth shall set you free.
No other encyclopedic resource on the internet is free of corruption by liberal untruths. Please look around while you're here, share this with others, edit your favorite entries, and enjoy the benefits of new insights that you never realized before. For example, do you know why pretzels have their shape? Click it to find out!
I’d expect at least some attempt at keeping out a conservative bias. Glass houses and all. Oh well, it’s just another examples of Republicans claiming that SOP news reporting displays a liberal bias whereas white washing it is being “fair and balanced.”
I really hate both sides. I’m going to start a new political party – details coming later this week.
posted by Jason at
11:29 AM
On Palin
Monday, September 01, 2008
My mom had me at a relatively young age. She was twenty-two years old, recently married, and still figuring out the nuances of adulthood. We didn’t have an easy life by any means. My dad worked two jobs during the majority of my childhood while my mom worked at various supermarkets as a cashier. Together, they brought money in at a steady pace and were able to provide for me everything I ever wanted. I never knew that my parents were struggling until I got older. I never knew about the sacrifices my parents made in order to buy me nice clothes and get me the toys I wanted and send me on all of the school trips. It wasn’t until I was older and on my own that I started to appreciate how high the cost of living is and how hard it is to take care of your own needs, let alone those of a child. I’m thirty years old now and doing quite alright and I still can’t even comprehend the level of sacrifice I’d have to make in order to bring a child into this world. My parents were unselfish in the most romantic sense of the word. My parents are, and always will be, my heroes. I can’t imagine ever meeting anyone else in this world that will ever show the commitment and resolve that they did to family.
My mom is a fighter. She fights for me and my sister, even to this day. There’ll be times when I’m on the phone and she catches a slight hint of depression in my voice and offers to “kick the shit” out of anyone that’s hurting me. I remember her fighting for me as a kid, going up against grandparents and aunts and teachers and other people that bring more than a fight with them. People that bring a demand for loyalty through thick and thin. People that can end hopes and dreams with the mark of a red pen. And she always stood up to them – she was steadfast and committed to one thing this world: family. Me. My sister. My dad. My mom and dad are the two most influential and inspiring people in my life. They are real people with real problems.
If either my mom or dad called me up and told me that they were selected to be the Vice Presidential nominee I would wish them the best of luck and rally everyone I know to vote against whatever ticket they were on. If that ticket were to win, I’d seriously contemplate moving out of the country (admittedly by way of an ambassadorship to Italy, I’m not saying I’m perfect). Because, here’s the thing: I can’t think of anyone in the world with more life experience than my parents. I can’t think of anyone in this world who commands more respect than my parents…
…but my mom does not belong in national politics. And Sarah Palin seems to be half of the person my mom is.
Yeah, Sarah Palin was the mayor of a small town. And, yeah, Sarah Palin is the governor of a small state. But, at the end of the day, Sarah Palin is campaigning on the fact that she’s a mom. That she has a strong sense of family values. But unlike my mom, who’d defend me and my sister to her dying breath, Sarah Palin seems to have no idea what family is about. She has no idea what it means to have unconditional love for a child and she has no idea what it means to protect her children from the forces that are constantly conspiring against them.
Let’s forget “experience” for a moment. Let’s forget about the fact that she feels she’s ready to be the second most-powerful person in the United States without even understanding what the job entails. I’m an opportunist, we’re all opportunists. If someone plopped a ten-million dollar advance on my lap in exchange for the next great American novel I’d accept in a second – I’d work out the details after the ink has dried. Being an opportunist is one of America’s greatest traditions and I don’t fault Sarah Palin for that at all. Here’s what I fault her for: throwing her 17-year-old daughter to the wolves.
There was a fair amount of circumstantial evidence piling up that Bristol Palin was the mother of Trig Palin. Most of it was hearsay and big leaps, nothing concrete. There was, quite possibly, a million different ways to combat the rumors if that was even necessary. Huffington Post didn’t even touch the story yet. Daily Kos was backing down. I saw more mentions of the rumors from conservative blogs that were blasting Daily Kos for even bringing it up. It was a non-issue at best, and all Sarah Palin had to do was release one photograph or say, “You guys are out of your fucking mind,” and it probably would have died.
But Sarah Palin didn’t do that. Instead she said, “My 17-year-old daughter can’t be four-month-old Trig’s mother because my 17-year-old daughter is five-months pregnant.”
Let me rephrase that. “My 17-year-old daughter is, indeed, irresponsible and is, indeed, a campaign issue but not the way you ugly liberals (and conservative commentators) are saying she is.”
My mom would never throw my ass under the bus like that, she would never throw me to these fucking media wolves the same way Sarah Palin offered Bristol to them. It is disgusting and it is in no-way indicative of a candidate that believes in “family values.”
The Sarah Palin situation has been making me sick these past couple of days, but today was the final straw. Today I saw a person who puts career first – where family, country, and integrity come into play I have no idea.
And there’s another big problem here, while I’m at it. Sarah Palin, within four days of accepting the vice presidential nomination, has had nothing but bad press come out against her. Is it muckraking? Sure, to a point. But even the relatively green Barack Obama managed to minimize the attacks against him, or at least hide his flaws well enough so that they trickled out instead of coming into play all at once. And that’s because Barack Obama is a politician. The vetting process is carried out mainly by our current tabloid media, and it’s only the real politicians that rise to the top and take the barbs and the investigations and the allegations and come out of it contenders. Being a politician isn’t always a bad thing. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Ronald Reagan – they were all politicians. They all had skeletons in their closets and some of them occasionally came out to play. But they came out over time. They were marginalized and pushed to the back. These people were able to go about their business, forcing change and good policies, and were never weighted down by the whispers and accusations of the press and the country.
Within four days of entering the national scene, Sarah Palin has not been able to speak of her vision or her leadership skills because all of her skeletons started falling out of the closet. She can’t keep her house in order; she can’t keep her business in check.
I don’t necessarily want “real” in a vice president. I certainly don’t want a theatrical version of “real” that panders for votes. And I also don’t want someone in office who can’t keep their own affairs in check. That can’t execute the proper cover-up from time-to-time in order to save face, especially when your face is the face of this nation. Sometimes, being a politician is a good thing. Being a responsible mother is always a good thing. And I firmly believe that Sarah Palin is neither a great politician nor a great mother.
I honestly hope she finds some way to gracefully back out of the ticket. I hope she does it in a way that doesn’t hurt her, McCain, or this country politically. I can handle McCain as president if that’s what I have to do, I cannot handle Palin stepping into the position if it were to come down to that.
My mom is a fighter. She fights for me and my sister, even to this day. There’ll be times when I’m on the phone and she catches a slight hint of depression in my voice and offers to “kick the shit” out of anyone that’s hurting me. I remember her fighting for me as a kid, going up against grandparents and aunts and teachers and other people that bring more than a fight with them. People that bring a demand for loyalty through thick and thin. People that can end hopes and dreams with the mark of a red pen. And she always stood up to them – she was steadfast and committed to one thing this world: family. Me. My sister. My dad. My mom and dad are the two most influential and inspiring people in my life. They are real people with real problems.
If either my mom or dad called me up and told me that they were selected to be the Vice Presidential nominee I would wish them the best of luck and rally everyone I know to vote against whatever ticket they were on. If that ticket were to win, I’d seriously contemplate moving out of the country (admittedly by way of an ambassadorship to Italy, I’m not saying I’m perfect). Because, here’s the thing: I can’t think of anyone in the world with more life experience than my parents. I can’t think of anyone in this world who commands more respect than my parents…
…but my mom does not belong in national politics. And Sarah Palin seems to be half of the person my mom is.
Yeah, Sarah Palin was the mayor of a small town. And, yeah, Sarah Palin is the governor of a small state. But, at the end of the day, Sarah Palin is campaigning on the fact that she’s a mom. That she has a strong sense of family values. But unlike my mom, who’d defend me and my sister to her dying breath, Sarah Palin seems to have no idea what family is about. She has no idea what it means to have unconditional love for a child and she has no idea what it means to protect her children from the forces that are constantly conspiring against them.
Let’s forget “experience” for a moment. Let’s forget about the fact that she feels she’s ready to be the second most-powerful person in the United States without even understanding what the job entails. I’m an opportunist, we’re all opportunists. If someone plopped a ten-million dollar advance on my lap in exchange for the next great American novel I’d accept in a second – I’d work out the details after the ink has dried. Being an opportunist is one of America’s greatest traditions and I don’t fault Sarah Palin for that at all. Here’s what I fault her for: throwing her 17-year-old daughter to the wolves.
There was a fair amount of circumstantial evidence piling up that Bristol Palin was the mother of Trig Palin. Most of it was hearsay and big leaps, nothing concrete. There was, quite possibly, a million different ways to combat the rumors if that was even necessary. Huffington Post didn’t even touch the story yet. Daily Kos was backing down. I saw more mentions of the rumors from conservative blogs that were blasting Daily Kos for even bringing it up. It was a non-issue at best, and all Sarah Palin had to do was release one photograph or say, “You guys are out of your fucking mind,” and it probably would have died.
But Sarah Palin didn’t do that. Instead she said, “My 17-year-old daughter can’t be four-month-old Trig’s mother because my 17-year-old daughter is five-months pregnant.”
Let me rephrase that. “My 17-year-old daughter is, indeed, irresponsible and is, indeed, a campaign issue but not the way you ugly liberals (and conservative commentators) are saying she is.”
My mom would never throw my ass under the bus like that, she would never throw me to these fucking media wolves the same way Sarah Palin offered Bristol to them. It is disgusting and it is in no-way indicative of a candidate that believes in “family values.”
The Sarah Palin situation has been making me sick these past couple of days, but today was the final straw. Today I saw a person who puts career first – where family, country, and integrity come into play I have no idea.
And there’s another big problem here, while I’m at it. Sarah Palin, within four days of accepting the vice presidential nomination, has had nothing but bad press come out against her. Is it muckraking? Sure, to a point. But even the relatively green Barack Obama managed to minimize the attacks against him, or at least hide his flaws well enough so that they trickled out instead of coming into play all at once. And that’s because Barack Obama is a politician. The vetting process is carried out mainly by our current tabloid media, and it’s only the real politicians that rise to the top and take the barbs and the investigations and the allegations and come out of it contenders. Being a politician isn’t always a bad thing. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Ronald Reagan – they were all politicians. They all had skeletons in their closets and some of them occasionally came out to play. But they came out over time. They were marginalized and pushed to the back. These people were able to go about their business, forcing change and good policies, and were never weighted down by the whispers and accusations of the press and the country.
Within four days of entering the national scene, Sarah Palin has not been able to speak of her vision or her leadership skills because all of her skeletons started falling out of the closet. She can’t keep her house in order; she can’t keep her business in check.
I don’t necessarily want “real” in a vice president. I certainly don’t want a theatrical version of “real” that panders for votes. And I also don’t want someone in office who can’t keep their own affairs in check. That can’t execute the proper cover-up from time-to-time in order to save face, especially when your face is the face of this nation. Sometimes, being a politician is a good thing. Being a responsible mother is always a good thing. And I firmly believe that Sarah Palin is neither a great politician nor a great mother.
I honestly hope she finds some way to gracefully back out of the ticket. I hope she does it in a way that doesn’t hurt her, McCain, or this country politically. I can handle McCain as president if that’s what I have to do, I cannot handle Palin stepping into the position if it were to come down to that.
posted by Jason at
10:12 PM
Knock-Knock. Who’s There? Palin. Palin who?
Friday, August 29, 2008
It seems like the strongest argument McCain had going for him had to do with Obama’s lack of experience. I think Obama addressed that issue by bringing Biden onboard, an inspired pick the more I think about it. But it’s still there, of course, and could be an effective weapon to sway some of the independent and undecided voters towards McCain. I really don’t get why McCain would squander that by going with a veep that has less experience than Obama, especially on a national level. Now we have McCain, the 72-year-old that, let’s face it, brings a health risk with him to the Oval Office being backed up by someone who’s NEVER played in national or international politics.
So why’d he choose Palin? I think we all know the answer to that one but let’s at least give some other possibilities a shot, first.
Is it because she’s the governor of a battleground state? Alaska is to Republicans what DC is to Democrats, electoral votes no matter who’s running. So that can’t be it.
Is it her policies? Hard to tell, to date she’s operated on a local level and a lot of her social policies lean towards the center (EDIT: Ok, so she seems to be socially conservative on some issues, centrist on others).
Is it because she provides something that McCain lacks? Youth, I guess. A shot at the female demo, maybe.
But that’s what it’s always going to come back to – Palin is a young woman. No matter what McCain may say, that’s why she was picked. At this stage in her career that’s all she brings to the table. A BS in journalism, little experience outside of small American cities and towns, a former beauty queen, a former sports reporter, a former HS basketball player…she brings nothing substantial to McCain’s ticket except to help the Hill-supporting Obama-spiters feel better about their eventual McCain vote.
Let’s put it this way, if the two-year Governor from Alaska was a man with the same exact policies and presence as Palin, McCain wouldn’t even know his name.
What this shows me is that McCain just doesn’t get it. It’s like in comics, when folks at DC and Marvel sit down and say, “Manga’s hot – let’s draw our characters with bigger eyes.” It doesn’t work like that – Hillary and Obama excited people because of what they’re saying, not because of their genitalia or skin color. Maybe some people, sure, but those people already had liberal sensibilities and they were becoming active for the first time. They weren’t die-hard conservatives that decided they were going to vote of Hill because she had a couple of breasts or Obama because he has the same skin color as them.
McCain took a chance and I think it’s going to fail. It’ll bring the issues of his old age back to the table and it’ll paint her as a gimmick pick. I’m voting for Obama, anyway, so it’s of little consequence to me. It’s just sad to see the man that I was ready to throw my support behind in 2000 fall so far out of touch with reality.
It’ll be an interesting November. And I really can’t wait for the veep debate.
So why’d he choose Palin? I think we all know the answer to that one but let’s at least give some other possibilities a shot, first.
Is it because she’s the governor of a battleground state? Alaska is to Republicans what DC is to Democrats, electoral votes no matter who’s running. So that can’t be it.
Is it her policies? Hard to tell, to date she’s operated on a local level and a lot of her social policies lean towards the center (EDIT: Ok, so she seems to be socially conservative on some issues, centrist on others).
Is it because she provides something that McCain lacks? Youth, I guess. A shot at the female demo, maybe.
But that’s what it’s always going to come back to – Palin is a young woman. No matter what McCain may say, that’s why she was picked. At this stage in her career that’s all she brings to the table. A BS in journalism, little experience outside of small American cities and towns, a former beauty queen, a former sports reporter, a former HS basketball player…she brings nothing substantial to McCain’s ticket except to help the Hill-supporting Obama-spiters feel better about their eventual McCain vote.
Let’s put it this way, if the two-year Governor from Alaska was a man with the same exact policies and presence as Palin, McCain wouldn’t even know his name.
What this shows me is that McCain just doesn’t get it. It’s like in comics, when folks at DC and Marvel sit down and say, “Manga’s hot – let’s draw our characters with bigger eyes.” It doesn’t work like that – Hillary and Obama excited people because of what they’re saying, not because of their genitalia or skin color. Maybe some people, sure, but those people already had liberal sensibilities and they were becoming active for the first time. They weren’t die-hard conservatives that decided they were going to vote of Hill because she had a couple of breasts or Obama because he has the same skin color as them.
McCain took a chance and I think it’s going to fail. It’ll bring the issues of his old age back to the table and it’ll paint her as a gimmick pick. I’m voting for Obama, anyway, so it’s of little consequence to me. It’s just sad to see the man that I was ready to throw my support behind in 2000 fall so far out of touch with reality.
It’ll be an interesting November. And I really can’t wait for the veep debate.
posted by Jason at
12:15 PM
Handicapping McCain’s VP Choice
Thursday, August 28, 2008
McCain’s supposed to be announcing his VP-candidate on Friday and through the powers of math and logic I’m going to let you know the person most likely to have their political career go down in a flaming wreck of Straight Talk Express. Everyone else is doing it, and I have about as much insight into the VP-selection process as anyone else, so I’m going to do it too. Let’s begin…
Rob Portman (3:2) – I have my money on Portman. Ohio is the half-racist Swing State McCain has the best chance of winning. McCain needs Ohio bad so he might as well pander to the people that still remember Rob Portman. The downside, of course, is his most recent gig as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Talk about an executive office that screwed the pooch.
Tim Pawlentry (2:1) – It must be great to be a Republican governor of a battleground state these days. Unfortunately for Pawlentry, I don’t think Minnesota is as important as Ohio this year. Sucks to reside in a cold, shitty, delegate-light state.
Kim Kardashian (3:1) – Her career needs some more definition and McCain needs that youth vote. Of course, McCain has no idea where to get that youth vote, hence Kardashian. She would be able to deliver the “Big Ass Lovers” demographic of which I’m admittedly a part of.
Mitt Romney (5:1) – I imagine McCain is intimidated by Ann Romney. She kind of reminds me of the younger, nicer version of Cindy McCain. I picture John sitting around, wondering what happened to his love life, and debating if he still has a soul every time he sees Ann. And that can’t be good for his campaign.
Jesus Christ (6:1) – Not the Son of Man but the immigrant cabbage-picker from California. McCain figures it’ll help him get the minority vote while pulling in votes from the Bible Belt since most fundies tend to believe TV sets are evil.
Ralph Avarez (9:1) - Securing the McDonald’s President and COO would ensure ad-penetration in the one location that caters to 95% of the demographic that could lean towards McCain. It also means McCain would be able to legally call himself, “Big Mac,” and win the hearts and votes of the people who choose Presidents they’d most likely have a drink with at a bar (51% of America, apparently).
Gallagher (15:1) – The man would be as tough on Iraqi insurgents as he is on produce. If not the veep, expect him to be the Secretary of Defense.
Dick Cheney (30:1) – It depends on whether or not Dick decides to execute the option on his contract, really.
Tom Ridge (40:1) – A lot of folks are putting him on the shortlist and I'm just not seeing it. I guess if it was me I'd have a hard time stepping down from Hershey's Executive Board. It's like going from Willie Wonka's Factory to a company that sells catheters.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (50:1) – Although technically ineligible McCain is still exploring the possibility, I’m sure. If a man McCain’s age can get an erection thanks to the wonders of Viagra, there has to be some way to get Arnie in the veep spot. A movie star governor of California that’s capable of battling evil corporations to restore Mars’ atmosphere – that’s one hell of a campaign commercial, right there.
Joe Lieberman (100:1) – A Jewish Independent still viewed by most as a Democrat? Stop kidding yourself.
Rob Portman (3:2) – I have my money on Portman. Ohio is the half-racist Swing State McCain has the best chance of winning. McCain needs Ohio bad so he might as well pander to the people that still remember Rob Portman. The downside, of course, is his most recent gig as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Talk about an executive office that screwed the pooch.
Tim Pawlentry (2:1) – It must be great to be a Republican governor of a battleground state these days. Unfortunately for Pawlentry, I don’t think Minnesota is as important as Ohio this year. Sucks to reside in a cold, shitty, delegate-light state.
Kim Kardashian (3:1) – Her career needs some more definition and McCain needs that youth vote. Of course, McCain has no idea where to get that youth vote, hence Kardashian. She would be able to deliver the “Big Ass Lovers” demographic of which I’m admittedly a part of.
Mitt Romney (5:1) – I imagine McCain is intimidated by Ann Romney. She kind of reminds me of the younger, nicer version of Cindy McCain. I picture John sitting around, wondering what happened to his love life, and debating if he still has a soul every time he sees Ann. And that can’t be good for his campaign.
Jesus Christ (6:1) – Not the Son of Man but the immigrant cabbage-picker from California. McCain figures it’ll help him get the minority vote while pulling in votes from the Bible Belt since most fundies tend to believe TV sets are evil.
Ralph Avarez (9:1) - Securing the McDonald’s President and COO would ensure ad-penetration in the one location that caters to 95% of the demographic that could lean towards McCain. It also means McCain would be able to legally call himself, “Big Mac,” and win the hearts and votes of the people who choose Presidents they’d most likely have a drink with at a bar (51% of America, apparently).
Gallagher (15:1) – The man would be as tough on Iraqi insurgents as he is on produce. If not the veep, expect him to be the Secretary of Defense.
Dick Cheney (30:1) – It depends on whether or not Dick decides to execute the option on his contract, really.
Tom Ridge (40:1) – A lot of folks are putting him on the shortlist and I'm just not seeing it. I guess if it was me I'd have a hard time stepping down from Hershey's Executive Board. It's like going from Willie Wonka's Factory to a company that sells catheters.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (50:1) – Although technically ineligible McCain is still exploring the possibility, I’m sure. If a man McCain’s age can get an erection thanks to the wonders of Viagra, there has to be some way to get Arnie in the veep spot. A movie star governor of California that’s capable of battling evil corporations to restore Mars’ atmosphere – that’s one hell of a campaign commercial, right there.
Joe Lieberman (100:1) – A Jewish Independent still viewed by most as a Democrat? Stop kidding yourself.
posted by Jason at
11:06 AM
Obama's Experience
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I went to one of my favorite "Hillary Supporters For John McCain" websites to see what that particular Breed of Bastard was saying about Hill's DNC speech last night. Not surprisingly, the F' Obama message boards all saw the speech as a secret code telling them to vote for McCain so Hill can run again in 2012. I sort of agree with them. Hillary essentially said what this country needed but didn't really say that Obama was the person to bring it. It was a clever bit of double talk that I think was missed by a large chunk of pundits. The online Obama-spiters were all harping on something we've been hearing since day one and the something that was implied with Hillary's speech - Obama's not ready to lead.
Nails on a chalkboard.
I'm not going to delve into my usual grievances with the "Obama's not ready" talk. I think there's plenty of qualitative evidence out there that Obama is ready to lead. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that running a grass-roots campaign for the Democratic nomination and now the presidency makes him a leader. If the issue is whether or not he can get things done...that's more a matter of surrounding yourself with the right cabinet and, you know, being a leader. We already established he has the latter covered and as for the former, Obama's beholden to no-one. That makes him well-equipped to make the right appointments.
But that's just a qualitative analysis and it allows for a lot of people who steal opinions from paid pundits to go, "Nuh-uh." So how about a quantitative analysis? Let's look at the pre-Presidential experience of our five greatest Presidents and see how they stack up to Barack Obama, since pre-Presidential political experience seems to be the primary qualification of the presidency.
George Washington
Commander in Chief of the Army
Thomas Jefferson
Virginia Delegate in Continental Congress
Two years Governor of Virginia
Virginia Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation
Four years US Ambassador to France
Four years Secretary of State
Four years Vice President
Alright, it's hard to put down the past experience of Washington and Jefferson. Especially if you throw in the whole "patriot" thing. No-one's pre-Presidential experience will ever measure up to these two so let's move on...
Abraham Lincoln
Four terms Illinois House of Rep.
Two years in Congress
I think now is a good time to remind everyone what Obama's pre-Presidential experience would be. Three terms in the Illinois House of Rep. and four years in the US Senate. Both Obama and Lincoln had a total of 10-years of pre-Presidential public office but Obama would have two more years of experience on a national level. Oh, and they were both lawyers, while we're at it. Oh, and senators trump congressmen. Oh, and the twelve years between Lincolns House of Rep. and Congress stint were spent losing various elections.
Just saying.
I also want to point out that Lincoln was viewed as an inexperienced, inept, dreamer. He swayed people to believe in his vision, however, and assembled one of the greatest cabinets this country has ever seen. Lincoln was also beholden to very few people and, as a result, he stacked his cabinet with the right people - even his greatest political enemies. Great Vision. Great Cabinet. That's what makes a great president.
Theodore Roosevelt
One year Assistant Secretary of the Navy
One year Governor of New York
Six months Vice President
I love Teddy's resume. If you just look at the positions Teddy looks like he has a ton of experience. When you look deeper and realize that he spent two-and-a-half years job whoring before coming President (via assassination) you start to wonder if Teddy was just in the right place at the right time all of the time. Teddy's one of my favorite presidents based solely on the fact that he delivered a 90-minute speech immediately after being shot on the chest, I like to think he spent two-and-a-half years threatening to kill people if they don't move him up the political chain. Anyway, his political experience falls seven-and-a-half years shy of Obama's. And it's important to remind everyone that working a year at a job doesn't really count as experience, you're lucky if you even know what your job entails after a year.
FDR
Two years New York Senate
Seven years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Four years as Governor of New York
Ok, it's impossible to put down FDR's pre-Presidential experience. And there was that whole polio thing, too (well, Guillain-Barré syndrome, but it's not my place to chip-away at a man's legend). I do find it funny that he took the same route as Teddy except, you know, actually stayed at his job for longer than a year.
So if I had to rank them on experience, it'd look something like this:
1 - Thomas Jefferson
2 - George Washington
3 - FDR
4 - Barack Obama
5 - Theodore Roosevelt
6 - Abraham Lincoln
I don't think we can use experience as a metric for predicting great presidents. I think you all should simply be honest with yourselves and admit that you hate Obama because he's black. Fuck it, if you all can throw shit around with nothing to back it up, so can I.
Nails on a chalkboard.
I'm not going to delve into my usual grievances with the "Obama's not ready" talk. I think there's plenty of qualitative evidence out there that Obama is ready to lead. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that running a grass-roots campaign for the Democratic nomination and now the presidency makes him a leader. If the issue is whether or not he can get things done...that's more a matter of surrounding yourself with the right cabinet and, you know, being a leader. We already established he has the latter covered and as for the former, Obama's beholden to no-one. That makes him well-equipped to make the right appointments.
But that's just a qualitative analysis and it allows for a lot of people who steal opinions from paid pundits to go, "Nuh-uh." So how about a quantitative analysis? Let's look at the pre-Presidential experience of our five greatest Presidents and see how they stack up to Barack Obama, since pre-Presidential political experience seems to be the primary qualification of the presidency.
George Washington
Commander in Chief of the Army
Thomas Jefferson
Virginia Delegate in Continental Congress
Two years Governor of Virginia
Virginia Delegate to the Congress of the Confederation
Four years US Ambassador to France
Four years Secretary of State
Four years Vice President
Alright, it's hard to put down the past experience of Washington and Jefferson. Especially if you throw in the whole "patriot" thing. No-one's pre-Presidential experience will ever measure up to these two so let's move on...
Abraham Lincoln
Four terms Illinois House of Rep.
Two years in Congress
I think now is a good time to remind everyone what Obama's pre-Presidential experience would be. Three terms in the Illinois House of Rep. and four years in the US Senate. Both Obama and Lincoln had a total of 10-years of pre-Presidential public office but Obama would have two more years of experience on a national level. Oh, and they were both lawyers, while we're at it. Oh, and senators trump congressmen. Oh, and the twelve years between Lincolns House of Rep. and Congress stint were spent losing various elections.
Just saying.
I also want to point out that Lincoln was viewed as an inexperienced, inept, dreamer. He swayed people to believe in his vision, however, and assembled one of the greatest cabinets this country has ever seen. Lincoln was also beholden to very few people and, as a result, he stacked his cabinet with the right people - even his greatest political enemies. Great Vision. Great Cabinet. That's what makes a great president.
Theodore Roosevelt
One year Assistant Secretary of the Navy
One year Governor of New York
Six months Vice President
I love Teddy's resume. If you just look at the positions Teddy looks like he has a ton of experience. When you look deeper and realize that he spent two-and-a-half years job whoring before coming President (via assassination) you start to wonder if Teddy was just in the right place at the right time all of the time. Teddy's one of my favorite presidents based solely on the fact that he delivered a 90-minute speech immediately after being shot on the chest, I like to think he spent two-and-a-half years threatening to kill people if they don't move him up the political chain. Anyway, his political experience falls seven-and-a-half years shy of Obama's. And it's important to remind everyone that working a year at a job doesn't really count as experience, you're lucky if you even know what your job entails after a year.
FDR
Two years New York Senate
Seven years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Four years as Governor of New York
Ok, it's impossible to put down FDR's pre-Presidential experience. And there was that whole polio thing, too (well, Guillain-Barré syndrome, but it's not my place to chip-away at a man's legend). I do find it funny that he took the same route as Teddy except, you know, actually stayed at his job for longer than a year.
So if I had to rank them on experience, it'd look something like this:
1 - Thomas Jefferson
2 - George Washington
3 - FDR
4 - Barack Obama
5 - Theodore Roosevelt
6 - Abraham Lincoln
I don't think we can use experience as a metric for predicting great presidents. I think you all should simply be honest with yourselves and admit that you hate Obama because he's black. Fuck it, if you all can throw shit around with nothing to back it up, so can I.
posted by Jason at
12:04 PM
'Fessing Up: Red Lobster
Sunday, April 06, 2008
I’m 30 and Robin is 29. We’re well within the “upper-middle class” range; some may even define us as within the “high income” range. It’s safe to say that we love food but it’s probably more accurate to say that we’re restaurant aficionados. We love going to the latest and greatest in DC-area restaurants and filling up on plates that’ll make the average DC tourist say, “Wuh huh?” Sure, we eat at the occasional chains but always with a sense of irony. T.G.I.Fridays, for instance, where I’ll sit and swallow a steak and plantain sandwich, commenting on how well it pairs with whatever pinot noir they’re pushing that particular month. Also we can occasionally behave like 95% of the rest of America and pretend that we have this totally unique restaurant in our neighborhood called “The Cheesecake Factory” because, let’s be honest, their cheesecakes aren’t all that bad.
And that ends the list of national chains we’ll admit to frequenting. There’s no Applebee’s. No Ponderosa or Bennigans or Outback Steak House or Perkins or Golden Coral or Olive Garden or Chevy’s or Chili’s. Even Legal Seafood seems a bit too mainstream these days and we lived in Boston back when Legal Seafood was still an aspiring chain; we’d rather go to McCormick & Schmick’s.
Oh, yeah, and there’s one thing I forgot to mention. We fucking love Red Lobster.
Yeah, I said it. Red Lobster has been the butt of my generation’s jokes for far too long. I honestly don’t even know where the hate came from. Is it the tacky décor? The horrid uniforms? The schlock commercials? It could be the clientele, I guess. If you look at the Venn diagram you’ll note that the intersection – that perfect storm of everything our generation is not – represents the average Red Lobster patron.
So Robin and I are outliers but we’re proud of it. I’m here right now to tell you that there is nothing wrong with Red Lobster. The seafood is always fresh, the portions are outrageous, and their dishes are damn tasty. Their bar selection isn’t that bad and their deserts are delicious in a Disney Land sort of way (and that makes them SUPER delicious).
Last night we were trying to decide what to do. We were trying to decide who to call, where to go, if we should eat at home first, etc. I was the one who brought it up. I said, “Let’s go to Red Lobster.” Robin was excited by the idea – Red Lobster is a rare treat for us since they’re all so far away. We knew we couldn’t invite any friends along because Red Lobster is our dark secret (well, was our dark secret).
We drove out to the Red Lobster in Alexandria and sat at the bar for a little while. We ordered a seafood sampler. Bacon-wrapped scallops, fried clam strips, and crab-and-lobster stuffed mushrooms. The dish was a miracle and it only cost us nine bucks. The bacon-wrapped scallops were as good as one’s I’ve eaten in most places, the clam strips were light and tasty, and the stuffed mushroom…I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus had them at his Last Supper. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.
It’s Lobster Fest time so it took us a while to decide on our actual dinner order. I got the lobster chops with grilled scallops, broccoli, rice pilaf, and a Caesar salad. Robin got grilled lobster and shrimp with this marvelous garlic-butter sauce and a baked-potato side and some broccoli. We split a half-pound of snow crab legs, had a couple of beers, and who could forget Red Lobster’s wonderful cheesy bread.
The cost for this shellfish and beer feast? $72. With tip. That’s basically the most two people could possibly spend at a Red Lobster. And for that price you get a meal that’ll cost you $72 per person at most high-end seafood restaurants and, honestly, it won’t taste all that much better.
Since we were on our own last night we decided to go all out – we went bowling after dinner and bought a bunch of scratch tickets. It was our way of fighting the establishment.
So I’m begging my generation: please give Red Lobster another chance. Ignore their large selection of “signature drinks.” Ignore their cringe-worthy marketing normally high-priced and sacred shellfish. Ignore the guy that’s yelling at his waitress because he hasn’t received his bread yet. Just sit down with your lady or your man, order an obscene amount of lobster and shrimp, be prepared to spend two hours there, and live a little.
You’ll find it’s not as bad as everyone says it is.
And that ends the list of national chains we’ll admit to frequenting. There’s no Applebee’s. No Ponderosa or Bennigans or Outback Steak House or Perkins or Golden Coral or Olive Garden or Chevy’s or Chili’s. Even Legal Seafood seems a bit too mainstream these days and we lived in Boston back when Legal Seafood was still an aspiring chain; we’d rather go to McCormick & Schmick’s.
Oh, yeah, and there’s one thing I forgot to mention. We fucking love Red Lobster.
Yeah, I said it. Red Lobster has been the butt of my generation’s jokes for far too long. I honestly don’t even know where the hate came from. Is it the tacky décor? The horrid uniforms? The schlock commercials? It could be the clientele, I guess. If you look at the Venn diagram you’ll note that the intersection – that perfect storm of everything our generation is not – represents the average Red Lobster patron.
So Robin and I are outliers but we’re proud of it. I’m here right now to tell you that there is nothing wrong with Red Lobster. The seafood is always fresh, the portions are outrageous, and their dishes are damn tasty. Their bar selection isn’t that bad and their deserts are delicious in a Disney Land sort of way (and that makes them SUPER delicious).
Last night we were trying to decide what to do. We were trying to decide who to call, where to go, if we should eat at home first, etc. I was the one who brought it up. I said, “Let’s go to Red Lobster.” Robin was excited by the idea – Red Lobster is a rare treat for us since they’re all so far away. We knew we couldn’t invite any friends along because Red Lobster is our dark secret (well, was our dark secret).
We drove out to the Red Lobster in Alexandria and sat at the bar for a little while. We ordered a seafood sampler. Bacon-wrapped scallops, fried clam strips, and crab-and-lobster stuffed mushrooms. The dish was a miracle and it only cost us nine bucks. The bacon-wrapped scallops were as good as one’s I’ve eaten in most places, the clam strips were light and tasty, and the stuffed mushroom…I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus had them at his Last Supper. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.
It’s Lobster Fest time so it took us a while to decide on our actual dinner order. I got the lobster chops with grilled scallops, broccoli, rice pilaf, and a Caesar salad. Robin got grilled lobster and shrimp with this marvelous garlic-butter sauce and a baked-potato side and some broccoli. We split a half-pound of snow crab legs, had a couple of beers, and who could forget Red Lobster’s wonderful cheesy bread.
The cost for this shellfish and beer feast? $72. With tip. That’s basically the most two people could possibly spend at a Red Lobster. And for that price you get a meal that’ll cost you $72 per person at most high-end seafood restaurants and, honestly, it won’t taste all that much better.
Since we were on our own last night we decided to go all out – we went bowling after dinner and bought a bunch of scratch tickets. It was our way of fighting the establishment.
So I’m begging my generation: please give Red Lobster another chance. Ignore their large selection of “signature drinks.” Ignore their cringe-worthy marketing normally high-priced and sacred shellfish. Ignore the guy that’s yelling at his waitress because he hasn’t received his bread yet. Just sit down with your lady or your man, order an obscene amount of lobster and shrimp, be prepared to spend two hours there, and live a little.
You’ll find it’s not as bad as everyone says it is.
Labels: editorial
posted by Jason at
2:01 PM
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